


JUNO

by majunju, perennials



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Dysfunctional Family, Getting Together, Hippogriffs, M/M, Oikawa Tooru is a God, Swords & Sorcery, actually everyone is emotionally repressed, author's hand kink magnum opus, emotionally repressed hinata shouyou, where's waldo levels of mystery and suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:33:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 93,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25070005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majunju/pseuds/majunju, https://archiveofourown.org/users/perennials/pseuds/perennials
Summary: Spring is a boy, a sword is a key, and hell is a place on earth.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou & Oikawa Tooru, Hinata Shouyou/Miya Atsumu
Comments: 130
Kudos: 581





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hi, elmo here. after five weeks which felt like 500 years, we can finally stop talking about the gundam, butterfly emojis, and oikawa tooru, and start talking about the, that's right, the collab. we're really fucking happy to be here. all art is by june (@atsuhinas, twitter) and writing is by me (@nikiforcvs, twitter), and all shitposting is by the both of us. if you'd like more detailed content warnings with slight spoilers, please skip to the end notes, though for reference there shouldn’t be anything worse than what bnha has to offer. the playlist linked below moves chronologically through the story, but each chapter has a song assigned in the notes as well, so you can either go along with this or put on taylor swift's red album and just cruise. please check out june's character designs before you dive in. they're wonderful. finally, if you have any thoughts at any point in the story, please feel free to share them (edit if you use #taylorswiftgundam on twitter i Will laugh). we'd love to hear from you. seriously.
> 
> with that, we humbly present to you the taylor swift gundam au. enjoy.
> 
> [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5u9ynqE2NHRlI3wITfCpkQ?si=IZb_xQQ7SvW3nolUGbEzkg). [character reference sheets](https://twitter.com/atsuhinas/status/1279490207461474304?s=20)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [the louvre](https://open.spotify.com/track/4YBDSEzVNQbvCvVIWNtruF?si=yEnbs9bZQ0aaqm9uZPg6KQ)   
> 

_But little by little,_  
_as you left their voice behind,_  
_the stars began to burn_  
_through the sheets of clouds,_  
_and there was a new voice_  
_which you slowly_  
_recognized as your own,_  
_that kept you company_  
_as you strode deeper and deeper_  
_into the world,_  
_determined to do_  
_the only thing you could do --_  
_determined to save_  
_the only life that you could_  
_save._

After all the rumors he’s heard in the castle, Hinata Shouyou is disappointed to find that the new sword instructor is, in fact, human. He had been expecting more based on word of mouth, whose descriptions ranged from ‘attractive cursed object’ to ‘ten-foot-tall serpent with a pike’. The new sword instructor does not have a pike; he has a sword. It is long and thin and ordinary-looking, and when Shouyou tries, only half-seriously, to stab him in the face, it comes flying out of his scabbard at an inhuman speed. So the new sword instructor survives Shouyou’s first attempt at his life. He even has the gall to smile about it, bland and diplomatic, while he sends Shouyou’s own sword spinning out of his grip. He leans in, his mouth to his ear. Shouyou’s sword clatters to a stop beside him.

“Good morning, your highness,” says the new sword instructor, the blade of his sword pressed flat against Shouyou’s thigh.

Shouyou twists around to meet his eye with a touch of irritation. “Good morning to you as well.”

“Did you just try to kill me?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Are you sure?”

Shouyou laughs, echoing his bland, diplomatic manner. “Why would I try to kill my new sword instructor?”

Though he did. Though he had been bored, and unimpressed by the faces he had seen recently, and had wanted to see what the new sword instructor would do. If he died, it would be a pity. If he lived, then good for them both. God's divination and all. Mercy, and all.

Light pours from a crack in the sky. Around them, the courtyard bustles with soldiers, castle attendants, the guards in their heavy armor and their surly, awkward skins. His attacker takes his time sheathing his sword.

“It’s not ‘the new sword instructor’,” he says, a single jade earring twinkling like saturn, while Shouyou reassures the guards that what just took place was not two consecutive murder attempts, but a greeting. The guards are angry, which is fair. They want to make a report to the king, which is also fair. But in all seriousness, Shouyou would rather die right here on the floor, than have anything reported to the king right now. He has been having the time of his life lately, which is to say that he is losing it. He is losing his grasp on everything. He tells them to forget it.

“I’m sorry,” he says when the guards have walked off. He reaches for his sword. “You were saying?”

“As I was saying, it’s not the new sword instructor,” the new sword instructor repeats, leaning his weight on one slender hip. The sleeves of his black button-up are rolled just past his elbows. The extra fabric is tucked into the waistband of his pants. Perhaps he does, in fact, somewhat resemble an attractive cursed object.

Shouyou raises an eyebrow.

“Yes?”

“It’s Atsumu. Miya Atsumu.”

  
⚜

  
Well, shit. Miya Atsumu can wield a sword.

  
⚜

  
His last sword instructor had been a young lady from one of the kingdoms up north. Her name was Kiyoko, and before being the personal sword instructor for the crown prince of the kingdom of Solis, a title which she said was a mouthful and consequently disliked, she had been a dragon hunter of wide renown. She had also recently gone missing during an expedition into the woods, due to mortal or magical interference. Thus the search for a replacement.

Shouyou had expected it to take longer. He had also been hoping to use his free afternoons to dig around further in the library, even if he might end up learning the same statistics about garlic and death camas. But of the twenty-something applicants for the position, a statistic Sakusa had tossed him during lunch in exchange for half an hour of peace, one of them had made an impression. The king had been won over immediately, and with the blessings of Oikawa Tooru, who had also apparently been won over, though no one knew how, the job vacancy was filled. Shouyou concluded that he must either be charming enough to die for or an assassin disguised as a temptress.

Miya Atsumu is neither charming enough to die for nor a temptress, though the part about being an assassin remains to be seen. He is not an attractive cursed object or a ten-foot-tall serpent with a pike. He is not from up north or down south, or any of the fringe nations that hide under the sullen brow of the old king, and he doesn’t have any next-of-kin listed on his profile, in case he dies on the job, or off of it. His birthday is in October, but he has declined to indicate his hometown.

“He’s hiding something.” Shouyou bends his quill back with two fingers.

Tsukishima ignores him for the moment, and ascends further up the ladder. He’s carrying enough books to commit a minor felony, tucked in the crook of one arm while he reaches for the shelf with the other. The great library is quiet at this time of the day. Just books, and sunlight, and the occasional pigeon, nesting noisily in the rafters.

Tsukishima rearranges the books on the top shelf. He’s twelve feet above Shouyou’s head and having the time of his life, if you overlook the sulking prince below. “And you know that because?”

“I just do.”

Tsukishima considers ignoring him. “The rest of the castle thinks he’s attractive.”

“The rest of the castle doesn’t matter.” The quill begins to quiver pathetically, begging to be let loose, but Shouyou is distracted; he isn’t thinking about his calligraphy assignment, which he has turned into a kind of abstract art, or the dinner he has been scheduled to have later with the king. In his mind’s eye, he relives the clashing and the disarming, and the moment when the guards earnestly thought their prince was going to be killed. He puts his face in his hands.

Tsukishima snorts. “Some prince you are.” He lowers himself to the ground, and snaps his fingers. The ladder shrinks into the center of his palm. He pockets it.

“Yeah, well,” Shouyou stretches his arms above his head. “I’m the only one this kingdom has.”

And he is. He’s the only prince in this stupid kingdom, even if he’s clumsy, even if he has a hole in his head that’s the size of a fist.

“Then what’s the problem?”

Shouyou clears a space on his desk and plants his face on it. “Me. I guess.” He imagines his calligraphy turning into a horse, and the horse running far, far away. “Me.”

  
⚜

  
Swordsmanship lessons are on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Historically their duration has varied: some instructors, particularly those from his childhood years, would keep him under their tutelage all day, as if he were some pitiful misshapen rock that they hoped to polish into a diamond. No longer free to frolic and destroy as he wished, Shouyou made his unhappiness known to the king, who by this point had already embarked on his string of accidental conquests across the region. The king waved his hand vaguely and dismissed all his instructors, and for several years Shouyou enjoyed unparalleled freedom whenever he was able to escape from Sakusa’s idea of vigilante justice. Then the conquests began to slow down; the blanks in his memory began to gather dust. The king developed an interest in fine wines and subpar parenting, and lay his sword down at his feet.

“Must be how I landed the job,” Atsumu muses. He parries and dances lightly aside, avoiding the sharp end of Shouyou’s sword. “Widen your stance.” He taps the floor with the heel of his boot. “Center of gravity, remember?”

Shouyou ignores him and gets a hand in his face for his efforts. Caught off-guard, he topples to the ground.

“No,” he says, rolling over. “I do not.”

Atsumu chuckles. “That’s a pity.”

“You’re a pity,” Shouyou says. Atsumu squats down beside him, and tilts his head to one side. Shouyou holds a hand up over his eyes, ignoring him. He’s sweaty, and out of breath, and his muscles are aching, all of which are good things, only they shouldn’t be. Hinata Shouyou is disinclined towards boys who look too good to be true. Once, in a story he read, one had found armageddon. “I don’t know why the king hired you.”

“You mean, your father.”

“The king.”

“Your father.”

Shouyou flicks Atsumu between the eyes. While he’s busy squawking about his delicate skin, Shouyou drags himself to his feet and nudges the sword out of his hands. It clatters to a stop a few feet away. Atsumu watches it go morosely.

“Center of gravity,” Shouyou comments. A breeze picks up around them, sending a swirl of sakura petals into the sky. Today, as well, the trees are flowering out of season. While not technically suited to this climate, the king’s mages have been obligated to tend to them with tender loving care, and so they have developed an immunity to the ways of nature. It always smells like spring in the castle, even if it doesn’t feel like it.

Shouyou smiles brightly. He watches as the effects of it bounce right off Atsumu’s face, and die on the floor beside him, and his new sword instructor displays a stunning immunity to what might otherwise have been declared a devastating historical event. It’s weird, he thinks, as Atsumu takes a knee on the premise of retying his boots. His shirt is stained with sweat, and his breath is coming out in little puffs of condensation, his slicked-back hair falling out of place. He’s settling in too fast. There should be a longer adjustment period, a greater panic; more dramatic gasping at the sprawling architectural wonder of this castle and its strange, sinuous hallways.

Atsumu looks up, and it’s a knife through his throat. “What’re you looking at, your highness?”

“Nothing,” Shouyou says.

He wipes the smile off his face with the back of his hand, turning his gaze to the ceiling of the sky. He doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like that Atsumu is new and smiling, that he seems to know so much about heaven when Shouyou knows so little. He doesn’t like that Atsumu treats the castle like a place he has returned to. If Atsumu is at home in this bizarre antiquated horror-show, then where does that leave Shouyou, who cannot get over the thing in the corner of his closet? He is not haunted. A prince has no time for dramatics, and fear that takes no form. But he sees things in the dark, crawling towards him across the floor, across the arid desert of the decades. And it seems that Miya Atsumu, in spite of his all weird, psychic tendencies, cannot.

  
⚜

  
The first rule of being a prince: don’t ask questions you won’t get answers to.

  
⚜

  
The stable attendants are always the first to rise. They can be seen buttoning their coats and lacing their boots, heading down the stairs with the morning light, and gathering in the corner of the courtyard. They milk the cows and feed the chickens and refill the feed troughs for the pigs. They make small talk about their plans for the weekend. Palace surveillance is lighter in the servants’ quarters; often, there is gossip to be shared. One of the library attendants was caught in the room behind the hippogriff statue. With a chambermaid. Now the librarian’s guild is in an uproar. Words of disapproval are exchanged. Laughs are shared.

By the time their morning duties are finished, the sun has long since meandered to her usual position in the sky. She watches them go about their work with a disinterested eye, while the other she saves for the main procession. Back in the castle, the rest are beginning to wake, archivists and mages and swordsmen, princesses, princes. Hinata Shouyou yawns as he throws his balcony doors open. He is already dressed for the day.

He had awoken earlier, before the stable attendants and the chambermaids, when the sun was still sleeping and the rest of the kingdom dozing under its wing. He has recently perfected the routine, after weeks of falling asleep at his desk and between stacks of paperwork. It is the part of his morning schedule that even his evil personal attendant, Sakusa Kiyoomi, does not know of. It is an adventure.

Every morning, he slips into the great library, the handle of a candle holder clamped between his teeth, while he works the heavy oak doors open. He checks each volume methodically, cracking them open and leaning against the ladder he has borrowed from Tsukishima, while he flips through their contents. When he is done with a row of books, he checks the space behind it. You never know what you may miss.

Hinata Shouyou is determined not to miss anything. He is looking for something in this library of old books and histories: the reason for the fist-sized hole in his head. It is something Sakusa, and his father, and the stable attendants, the chefs, the chambermaids with their broomsticks are adamant about ignoring. They smile through their teeth and wave handkerchiefs in his face. There’s nothing to know, they say. There’s nothing for you to worry about.

Luckily, Hinata Shouyou is very good at worrying about things, and for once, he thinks his concern is justified. So every morning he wakes up before anyone else, lights the candle he keeps behind the closet, pulls on his gloves and steps out of his quarters while keeping an eye out for the guards, that don’t sleep, that never sleep, that probably sleep only in fairytales, because this castle is just that weird, and then he—

“—didn’t think I’d see you up so early, your highness.”

Miya Atsumu takes a step back, a little startled. The castle groans in its sleep, complaining of an ache in its shoulder. Shouyou, for all it’s worth, keeps his shit together for all of five seconds.

Then he drops his candle. How does the line go again? When the saints come marching in, you had better march out. Get the hell out of there.

  
⚜

  
Question: is hell a place, or a person?

  
⚜

  
“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Uh.” Atsumu dodges Shouyou’s line of sight like it’s fire. Atsumu dodges the actual fire, albeit still a small one, licking cheerily along the edge of the carpet. “Um. The carpet.”

Shouyou ignores both of them. “It’s four o’clock in the morning.” He should be in the great library by now, on the fourth shelf in the third aisle of Ancient Artifacts and Ailments. Reading a book. Yawning over a book. Touching the delicate wispy pages of a book, holding it up to his face, smelling the old ink.

Atsumu clears his throat, a little incredulous. “Your highness, the carpet is on fire.”

But it’s a small fire. It’s not going to destroy the north wing before the guards get to them, not with the way they’re stationed at every intersection in this castle, trained to jump at the sound of mice skittering across the floor. It’s not going to kill anyone. The urge to retreat into his quarters, and leave Miya Atsumu, the sword instructor from hell, floundering in the hallway is strong enough that he has to fight to push the thought away. It pokes at his rib cage, curious. This isn’t what a prince would do, it says seedily. This isn’t very royal of you.

Atsumu stares down the long end of the hallway, biting his lip nervously. Shouyou is reminded that even snakes have their moments and that Sakusa, who keeps a pair of vipers in his sleeping quarters, had once warned him of the deadly allure of poison. Miya Atsumu is not a snake. He is, if he has not lied about that as well, barely a year older than Shouyou. Besides which, the great library is waiting for him with its luminous shelves and its secrets, the hidden archives he isn’t allowed to see until he’s proved himself smart enough to run a kingdom. Seeing how he will not be king for a while to come, he has no choice but to take advantage of the time he has right now. Which is not a lot. Hinata Shouyou is running on a deficit of luck.

He raps the wall twice. For a moment, nothing happens and Atsumu stares at him like he’s grown a third leg or asked for his hand in marriage; down the hallway, the sound of voices creeps towards them. The castle stirs. The sun cracks open an eye.

Then the stone collapses, revealing a passageway carved into the wall. Atsumu keeps gawking at him, wide-eyed and stupid, so Shouyou drags him in with him, too bored to explain, and then shuts the door behind them.

  
⚜

  
Hinata Fuyumi had seventy-percent of the castle torn down and rebuilt before her son’s third birthday. While the construction process had begun much earlier, the arrival of Shouyou into their lives provided the necessary impetus for her to complete it. She declared to her husband that she would have the castle transformed by the time Shouyou was three. And so she did. Hidden switches were built into the walls. Secret rooms were dug from stone. An intricate series of interconnected passageways was inlaid in the skeleton of the castle, which could take a person from the west wing to the throne room in several minutes, if only they knew how to use them.

There, she said, smiling as she descended the steps of the north tower. I have made him a place to come back to.

Several years later, her son starts laughing uncontrollably as he drags a boy he has known for just under four weeks through one of the best-kept secrets in this castle. He is unbothered by the cold, dry darkness. Two lefts, a right, another left. Continue straight ahead for twenty-seven meters. Here you are passing over the top of the great library; here you have arrived at the side of it. Shouyou feels along the wall with one hand, the other still clamped loosely around Atsumu’s wrist. His fingers find the incision he is looking for. He presses into it.

“What.” Atsumu stops, shakes his head, then looks around him. “What the fuck was that?”

Shouyou wonders, vaguely, where all the adrenalin came from. “What were you doing in the royal chambers at four in the morning?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” Atsumu lies. Shouyou feels a flicker of irritation. He glances at the clock-face carved into the wall above them, and retrieves Tsukishima’s ladder from his pocket.

“Won’t they check your room?”

Shouyou is halfway up the ladder when Atsumu asks this. He looks down, and for a moment his vision swims. “Trick of the light,” he says, which isn’t a lie as much as it is a delicate simplification of the truth, but he hopes Atsumu doesn’t ask any further.

“The hell does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“The hell are we doing here?”

“Nothing.”

Atsumu prods at Tsukishima’s ladder like a large, overgrown puppy with kitchen knives for teeth. Shouyou leans his forehead against the shelf and groans. He shouldn’t have done this. He shouldn’t have chosen to see his stupid morning inquiry through to the end, because Miya Atsumu may be an outsider, but that’s still one more person who could rat him out to the king. And Shouyou’s working on a limited timeline here. He’s only got five months to June. Five months to the coming of age ceremony, that’s either going to kill him, or send this whole castle up in flames. The king cannot know what he is doing. The king cannot know that there is a plan at all, that there is something on Shouyou’s mind besides the champagne and the bubbles. Because if he asks about it, and he will ask about it, asking about things is in the guidebook for subpar parenting, Shouyou won’t have anything to say except: I still think you’re a piece of shit. And that would be a terrible thing to tell your own father.

  
⚜

  
“...Do you come here every day?”

“Do you want to keep your neck?”

“God, you’re awfully uptight for someone with such a pretty smile. Relax. I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“I am relaxed.”

“No, you’re not.”

“I’m trying.”

“You might want to try harder, your highness. Bit of life advice. Try harder.”

  
⚜

  
When he opens his eyes, he’s alone. He’s standing in a room he doesn’t recognize, and there’s something in the distance. Fire, perhaps. Or dawn.

Dawn is an apparition. Dawn is the man taking off his gloves, peeling the black leather back. He’s standing in a room he doesn’t recognize, and there’s a man taking off his gloves, and now he’s panicking, because he’s not supposed to take off his gloves. Someone told him this, a long time ago. He can’t do this. He’ll be scolded.

“I can’t do this,” he says, his voice coming out like water.

“Yes,” says god, who is dawn, who is the man. “You can.”

God has black hair and black eyes and smooth skin. God has an anger management problem. God takes off his gloves and holds his hands by the wrists, and he’s still panicking, he doesn’t like this, he has to get away. Where are his gloves? Where is he? His feet aren’t on the floor, though the rest of his body feels heavy, the rest of him is here.

He pulls his hands away, but God pulls back. He pulls on his hands, and god pulls harder. Tug-of-war, merry-go-round, it’s a child’s game of numbers. How much until you let go. How much until you give up.

“Stop,” he pleads.

God tilts his head to one side. “Stop what?”

There’s a sound like the sky cracking open, and he stumbles backwards, off-balance, his hands coming up to brace for impact, but there is no impact, he looks up from the ground, his hands are gone. God is still holding onto them. He can hear the sound of their smile, the sticky saccharine afterglow. They hold his hands against their chest. He feels his heart twitch like it’s been shot.

“They’re ugly hands,” God says, like they don’t want to be here at all. “But they’ll do.”

He starts to scream. His body burns like a pyre, and his body has wrist-stumps for hands, and god is going to do something bad with them, he knows this somehow, he is sure of it. If he doesn’t stop them now, the world is going to end. If he doesn’t stop them now, then it will all be his fault.

He keeps screaming. He keeps screaming. He screams until his head falls off of his neck and god is a shadow in the distance, and when he looks down he realizes his entire body is falling apart: his elbows are snapping off, his feet are coming loose. He tries to put one arm forward and realizes his shoulder is gone.

The jigsaw puzzle of his body gives one last heave, like Atlas letting the sky down, and then—

“—Your highness. Your shitty, sleep-deprived highness.”

Shouyou sighs and presses his face into the green, leather-bound first edition of Healing Herbs and Their Favorite Places. The paper smells woody and comforting. Behind him, Sakusa is asking if he knows anything about the fire that started outside his room a few days ago, but Shouyou ignores him. He turns his head to one side, blinking numbly at the sunlight streaming in through the window. He should have slept earlier.

  
⚜

  
Sakusa Kiyoomi is hiding from the sun near the staircase that leads to the east wing, as is his habit on Wednesday afternoons, when a visitor crashes unceremoniously into the courtyard. Sakusa Kiyoomi is trying to enjoy the view of the immortal, and frankly kind of creepy, sakura blossoms in the courtyard, when the courtyard is smashed to pieces. Sakusa Kiyoomi is regretting his commitment to observing the prince’s swordsmanship lessons on Wednesday, when everyone in the courtyard begins to move hastily to join him near his staircase. He sees the guards, the chambermaids, the stable boys. For a second, he allows himself to feel relief.

Then the shouting begins. Forty-three heads turn to the hippogriff, and the high, wobbly voice wavering from behind it. One head turns back.

“Sakusa,” the prince says, his hand on the cuff of his glove.

“No,” says Sakusa, who is trying to do his job.

“Sakusa.”

“If you go out there I will tell your father about the time you snuck into the city and got drunk in a tavern with a bunch of travelers wielding twenty-feet-long knives.”

The prince gives him an unimpressed look. “They were twenty-seven feet long, not twenty,” he says, sounding confident and scathing and a little dismissive. “And I wasn’t drunk.”

If the prince always sounded like this, then Sakusa would not have had to spend the springtime of his youth teaching him how to hold back a smile. It is a pity that he only shows it on such occasions as when a rogue hippogriff has breached the castle. Head of ass, body of ass, wings of ass. A walking terror, this one. It will not be dealt with easily.

Of course, all of the castle’s guards have been trained on how to disarm a rogue hippogriff. The chambermaid this one has cornered against a wall adds to the sense of urgency, but they have seen worse terrors in this kingdom. Sakusa sends one of the younger guards up to alert the mages in their bizarro mage hideout, several floors above the clouds. He sends the rest into the field.

The hippogriff growls. It paws at the inlaid rock floor and its talons make an awful screeching sound. Sakusa notices, belatedly, that it seems just a little bit more unhinged than the average hippogriff, though only a little bit. Just a little. He watches as a trio of palace guards approaches it, swords at the ready, shoulders relaxed. Beside him, the prince’s eyes are glued to the hippogriff. Beside him, Miya Atsumu’s eyes are glued to the prince.

Solis’ swords are made of a rare kind of metal whose name Sakusa has never really bothered learning how to pronounce. Nonetheless, he can tell you how to spell it, and if you ask, he can write it with his quill in a gorgeous, flowing script. Solis’s swords are strong enough to cut a man in half with one swing; several men with two; a dragon with five, though it takes a lot to get there in the first place, so most do not bother trying. These are the thoughts running through his mind as he watches the first guard just barely nick one of its wings. Sakusa Kiyoomi is thinking: do better. He is thinking about how those swords were built for more resistant weather. He is thinking of the report he will have to put together for the king, and how to best omit the prince from the table of contents, and he is thinking about how dysfunctional this whole family arrangement is when you actually stop to think about it, which he is doing right now, Sakusa Kiyoomi is doing a lot of thinking, when the first guard is lifted off the ground.

Beside him, the prince gasps. Beside the prince, Miya Atsumu flinches.

Surprise: there are two hippogriffs. Two hippogriffs, two men, one dead body.

“Sakusa.”

The second hippogriff’s talons are bright red and gleaming in the afternoon light. It dives at the two remaining guards, but they were taught how to disarm a rogue hippogriff, not a mad one, and this one is out for blood. They swing their swords wildly, livid with fear, and the hippogriff only takes a step back, as if offended. Behind Sakusa, forty-one heads are huddled together, frantically discussing contingency plans. Someone suggests a kitchen knife. Another suggests a spell. A mage, they echo. They need a mage. But the mages are still high up in their bizarro mage hideout, even if someone is on their way to their tower. While the second hippogriff plucks bits of skin from its talons, the first hippogriff advances, languidly, on its prey.

The prince grabs the sleeve of Sakusa’s tunic.

“SAKUSA.”

For the second time in his life, Sakusa Kiyoomi finds himself seriously considering rewriting the laws of his personal universe. He watches the spray of blood across the courtyard through someone else’s eyes, a tight, unfamiliar panic building in his throat. Regardless of the sins of their forefathers, death is not something to be complacent about. Death is the end of life. It is a stilling of the breath, the slackening of the jaw, the slowing of blood, and if Sakusa puts blood on today’s report for the king, he may be fired.

Then Miya Atsumu darts into the fray with a sword, and a half-laced-up boot, and an expression that says he didn’t give this a modicum of thought before acting, and the prince is yelling a different name this time, which Sakusa thinks is oddly hilarious, as the prince hasn’t sounded this distressed in years and, more worryingly, an unexpected development, and then there’s blood and more blood and dead things flying in their direction, and if this hasn’t been said yet, Sakusa Kiyoomi is not a fan of blood. He’s a personal attendant for a reason, not a knight.

He drops his books, stumbling backwards until his back hits the wall. Miya Atsumu drops to a crouch. He points the business end of his sword at the evil hippogriff from hell, makes a prayer to Atlas, god of keeping things together, and rushes in.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i want to hold your hand](https://open.spotify.com/track/4DRBaZ760gyk7LWnaJFqsJ?si=gS1UKDZXQx27Y1ocKInYlg)

The first rule of dealing with a hippogriff: don’t let yourself be picked up. You will die.

The second rule of dealing with a hippogriff: don’t expose your back. You will die.

The third rule of dealing with a hippogriff: be its friend. If you can’t, then be Miya Atsumu.

  
⚜

  
Total casualties: one soldier (twenty-seven, unmarried, a fan of recreational darts), one courtyard (wrecked beyond immediate magical resuscitation), one limb (Miya Atsumu’s).

“It’ll grow back,” he says, eyes bright and unsteady.

Akaashi Keiji frowns. “No, it won’t. We are going to reattach it.” On the other side of the quilt they’ve laid Atsumu out on, Bokuto Koutarou is putting the finishing touches on his new transport spell. He complains that he’s really not all that great at transport stuff, he much prefers ripping into dragons, so can he please, like, rip into some dragons instead? Akaashi ignores the quip about dragons, and tells him to hurry up.

Shouyou is distracted for a second by a bloodstain on his shirt. He picks at it with his nails, feeling sick. When he looks back up, Bokuto is snapping his fingers, while Akaashi pinches the edge of his cloak, and then all three of them are gone.

“How are you holding up, your highness?”

He sees the entourage of white butterflies before he sees Oikawa, floating into his line of sight like a large and particularly annoying peacock.

Shouyou shrugs. “Alive.”

Oikawa leans handsomely against the pillar beside him, arms folded. He, too, is watching the space where his underlings and Atsumu had previously been. “That is good,” he says, in the same manner in which one might say ‘it is morning’ or ‘we are out of potato stew’. The gold chains of his earrings glitter obscenely. The clear crystal dangling from one ear winks at him.

Shouyou glares at him in secret. Oikawa probably notices this, but he gives no indication that he has, twirling his staff thoughtlessly between a gauntleted thumb and forefinger. The sash tucked into his belt looks like it will fall off at any moment. It always does.

“Well,” Shouyou continues, bending his fingers back with one hand. “My sword instructor is not. Very good.”

“He’s not dead, my dear prince.”

“He came awfully close to it.”

Oikawa leans forward, his eyes glued to Shouyou’s face with an intensity that Oikawa Tooru alone is capable of conjuring. The movement is accompanied by the sound of metal and magic. They are the two things that everyone knows to be wary of in this kingdom; but Shouyou isn’t afraid of Oikawa. He’s never been.

He tugs, childishly, on the hem of his toga. “Why did you tell the king to hire him?”

Oikawa rears back, as if surprised. “I did?”

“Oikawa.”

Oikawa laughs. Shouyou has always suspected that he likes the sound of his own laughter, high and aerated like a carefully-whipped cream or freshly made macaron batter. Perhaps it is one of those things that comes with age. Perhaps it is one of those things that comes with being Oikawa. He is practically part of the castle’s infrastructure at this point; no one knows how old he is, or where he came from. But they know that he could kill a man with the flick of a wrist.

“He seemed interesting.” Oikawa smiles like a deity. “And he is, no?”

Shouyou twists the fabric of his toga around a finger. “No, he’s a fool.”

“I always figured you liked the foolish ones,” Oikawa says, and Shouyou scowls, ready to rip his shiny earring off, but Oikawa takes a step away before he can do so. Oikawa basks in the glitter of his own presence, his butterfly staff clasped loosely in one hand, and then, still smiling, flits out of sight.

A breeze stumbles across the ruined courtyard. Oikawa’s butterflies linger for a few moments, alighting on Shouyou’s hair and shoulders and making him feel small. It is always like this with Oikawa: cryptic imagery, cryptic smiles. Shouyou is given a few minutes to reflect, generously, on what he has done to contribute to the betterment of society.

Then the afternoon moves on. He allows himself to be herded up the stairs by a small army of chambermaids, whose names are not Riko and who have not just survived an encounter with a live, slightly-cursed hippogriff. They feed him grapes, and watermelon slices, and pat down his hair. They deposit him in the baths with a fresh change of clothes and a towel hanging from a silver rack. Shouyou lowers himself into the bathtub, which smells like sakura and sweet peaches. He sticks his head underwater. Above him the pigeons are singing some old, melancholy song whose name he should probably know, circling the painted-glass ceiling with mournful cheer. Shouyou closes his eyes. He leans his head against the edge of the tub.

The minutes chase the tension out of his shoulders. The quiet nestles itself behind his ears, reminding him that in spite of all that has been lost, some things have been found as well. For the first time today, he allows himself to have a single, selfish thought:

Miya Atsumu looked good with his hair all mussed-up like that. For this alone, Shouyou should be sent straight to hell. No trial required.

  
⚜

  
“See? It grew back.”

“It did not grow back.”

Shouyou pokes at the scar tissue on Atsumu’s arm and Atsumu inhales so sharply, even Natsu wanders over to ask if he’s okay. Atsumu is clearly not okay. Shouyou hasn’t seen him in a week, which is how long he’s been asleep for; to him, the hippogriff gouged his arm out just yesterday. Shouyou wonders how fresh the memory is. If he can still feel talons.

Natsu holds out a single blue rose. “Thank you,” Atsumu says gingerly, shifting his weight around. She skips back into the depths of the garden.

It’s cold out today. The sky is a sheer, icy blue, like the frozen surface of a lake, and their breaths come out pale and cracked. Atsumu turns his condolence gift from Natsu over in his hands.

“I’m, uh, sorry about trying to kill you,” Shouyou mumbles, watching Atsumu quietly, watching the muscles shift under his skin. The circular seam of his arm is still hot to the touch. Things that have been lost do not come back easily.

“Oh?” The discomfort vanishes from Atsumu’s face, quick as a dream. He leans forward on his elbows, tilts his head to one side so the hair isn’t falling all into his eyes. His jade earring catches the light like a star. “So you admit it.”

“I. You’re. I mean.” Shouyou searches for a way to convey the clumsy knot in his chest and comes up blank. No amount of formal schooling at the hands of Sakusa Kiyoomi could have prepared him for this. “Thank you for saving Riko,” he says finally, unsure what else he can add without going off course and veering off a cliff.

Atsumu clamps his other hand, the one that hasn’t been just recently reattached, over his mouth. He hums.

“I didn’t really save her.”

“No, you did.”

Atsumu hums again, softer this time. “I didn’t do it for her.”

They stare at each other for three seconds of perfect, immutable silence.

Then Shouyou snorts. He catches himself immediately, and tries to hide his face in his shoulder. But Atsumu is staring back with open mortification, his eyes wide, and Shouyou can’t do it. He can’t do it. He knows this isn’t like him, and he knows he’s being rude, but he starts laughing again, the sound bubbling out of some hidden compartment in his chest. All the roses are spinning above his head, their little metal arches turning into spirals of giddy, hand-spun silver, and he refuses to believe that Miya Atsumu is real. Miya Atsumu is a conman sent from another dimension. Miya Atsumu is a dream.

“Who else,” he manages, sliding lower in his seat. “Who else could you have done it for?” Atsumu is slowly turning very, very red. Shouyou decides it’s the best he’s ever looked. “The hippogriff? The one you stabbed?”

“Well, I mean—”

He leans forward and hooks his fingers under the collar of Atsumu’s shirt. Fastened to the left point is a small jewel. It means he’s one of the crown prince’s people; one of Shouyou’s. It means that wherever Shouyou goes, so is he expected to follow. Across the garden, Natsu is nowhere to be seen, and Sakusa has been banished to the land of evil paperwork where he rightfully belongs; it is just the two of them right now. Just the crown prince of a messed-up kingdom and a sword instructor who walked out of a hole in the ground. Shouyou rests his forehead on Atsumu’s shoulder. The good one.

“Never do that again. Teach me instead.”

Atsumu leans into him.

“Is that an order?”

Shouyou exhales, feeling winter leaving through his teeth. He feels the warmth of Atsumu’s skin through his clothes, the stutter of his breathing.

“Yes.”

  
⚜

  
The courtyard is gone. The average hippogriff is not capable of even a quarter of this destruction, but the two hippogriffs involved had apparently been charmed by some wayward traveler or another, and had their inhibitions wiped clean. The above are Hoshiumi Kourai’s departing words as he takes off on another long, meandering journey to the west on his new favorite steed: hippogriff number one. Hippogriff number two, having killed a man, has been relocated to the dungeons.

In the meantime, the palace’s interior design team is cobbled together from its previous generation, of whom many are dead but a few remain in reluctant old age, and sent to work on the missing courtyard. They mourn the loss of all that beautiful, inlaid rock and the insignia emblazoned across the heart of it; the personal sword instructor of the crown prince could have done a better job, is all, they mutter to each other, rubbing their hands together in a pithy manner. But he didn’t die, they recall later. So perhaps he has done enough.

“‘Enough. Listen to me.’”

Kageyama Tobio rearranges the contents of his plate again, this time by color.

“Is what he said.”

Shouyou groans. “Why do all of you talk to him so much? What joy do you get out of this?”

“None.” Kageyama pushes his carrots to one side. With derision. “Unlike you, we don’t have the option to decline a request from the king.”

The entirety of Kageyama’s plate is slowly transforming into abstract art. He’s mashed his potatoes into an unidentifiable dirt-like substrate, and impaled his carrots on his asparagus. Shouyou doesn’t even know how he managed to get the carrots there. Aren’t carrots pretty hard? What did he do to his asparagus?

“Stop playing with your food.”

“Find another person to practice your swordsmanship with while your current instructor is incapacitated. Is what he said.”

Shouyou snatches a carrot-asparagus monstrosity off his plate, and stands up. “I’m going to get more milk.”

Later, he’s walking down a corridor on the second floor, when he catches sight of Atsumu in the inner courtyard. He’s tossing a ball back and forth with Natsu, who is resplendent today in a rich blue dress with billowing sleeves. She’s wearing a floral hat, from their mother’s old wardrobe, and lace gloves. Atsumu’s coat is draped over one arm, and the top buttons of his shirt are undone.

Blessed with the same natural athleticism as her brother, Natsu is competent at playing catch, when the wind blows in her favor and she isn’t being distracted by a passing bird or friend, of whom she has many. Natsu has charmed almost all of the castle staff, from the cooks who leave a batch of spiced sable biscuits out for her every Thursday like she is some kind of cat, to the chambermaids who have acquiesced to her every demand. Natsu’s room is forest green. All of it. Bokuto was invited to charm the candles.

Atsumu plays the fool. He catches the ball with his bad hand, or pretends to trip over himself while reaching for it. He loses track of his surroundings, squinting at the overcast sky, and falls over exaggeratedly at her feet. Shouyou props his elbows on the railing and leans over the edge, watching as Atsumu grins and accepts the hand that Natsu graciously, but shyly, offers. She pulls him back up. He readies himself for her next attack.

At the moment in which Natsu tosses the ball at Atsumu’s head again, he turns. Oh, he seems to be thinking, his expression melting into something summery and sweet as he meets Shouyou’s eyes.

He waves. Ears burning, just a little, Shouyou waves back.

The ball hits Atsumu over the head and Shouyou bursts out laughing, his arms dangling over the parapet. Natsu panics and runs forward. Atsumu covers his head with his hands, cringing theatrically. In the background, Tsukishima Kei passes by and watches as their wonderful, troubled, and terribly dramatic prince shouts something across the courtyard.

Huh, Tsukishima thinks.

Atsumu sticks his tongue out and shouts something back, about how it’s rude to call someone a fool. But Tsukishima does not catch this part. Tsukishima does not particularly care for it. He has bigger things to deal with, anyway, like whoever’s stolen his ladder from him, and whoever’s been putting it to use. When he figures out who it is, Tsukishima thinks cheerfully, they are going to pay.  


⚜

  
The second rule of being a prince: don’t ask for things you don’t deserve.

  
⚜

  
“And this is legal? You’re sure?”

Shouyou gestures at the trapdoor. Atsumu gestures at Shouyou. The trapdoor stays right where it is in the center of the hallway, its hinges old and rusted, yawning derisively. 

“Seriously?”

Shouyou begins to lower himself down the ladder. Rung by rung, Atsumu vanishes from sight.

From above him, wavering slightly: “Uh, what are you doing?”

“We,” Shouyou corrects him, his voice rising out of the hallway beneath the other hallway, the nice, fancy gilded hallway. He jumps off the last few rungs and lands squarely on his feet. “We are going exploring.”

There’s a terse pause, followed by a long withdrawn sigh, followed by the reluctant sound of someone climbing down the ladder. Shouyou presses his hands to the walls, walking down the length of the hallway until he finds what he’s looking for. He whispers something to the stone. The hallway blooms with light.

Satisfied, he turns around and finds himself face-to-face with Atsumu, who has regrettably elected for a change of clothes. Earlier this morning, he had been in a half-buttoned shirt and loose pants. Shouyou had stumbled into him at the entrance to the great library, his hair uncombed and his smile sleepy and lopsided. Let me accompany you, he offered. Shouyou, still feeling the sharp guilt of watching someone’s arm be clawed off while you stood by and watched, said yes, after which they spent an hour poring through the archives. At one point, Atsumu asked about magical surveillance, which he had correctly deduced is installed in nearly every inch of the castle. A trick of the light, Shouyou replied. It is a trick of the light.

“This a trick of the light too?” Atsumu asks dryly as Shouyou starts walking down the hallway.

He shrugs. “Probably.”

The personal sword instructor of the crown prince is expected to dress appropriately. While previous generations, both deceased and retired, have typically brought their own sets of clothes to the castle, Miya Atsumu was apparently handed to the royal seamstress as an elaborate door gift. Haiba Lisa must have been delighted. Nothing else would explain the care with which Atsumu’s outfit has been constructed. His red, double-breasted coat is trimmed with gold soutache; his epaulettes are adorned with braids of silk. Everything about him is neat and rich and gorgeous. It hides the rugged edge of his voice, the way his hair falls into his eyes when he is holding a sword in one hand. When the boy is this unassuming, and the boy is this strange, it hides more than it shows.

He fingers his jade earring absently, as he follows Shouyou through magically-lit hallways and winding staircases, trapdoors and revolving mirrors. The golden jewel on his collar catches in the light.

“I used to hide from Sakusa and Oikawa in here.” Shouyou drags his palm along the wall, feeling the rough-hewn rock through his gloves. “It was my mother’s idea, but she said she built this for us. She wanted to give us, in her own words, a place to come back to.” They reach the end of the hallway. He picks a direction on a whim. “Whatever that means.”

Atsumu trails his hand after Shouyou’s like a second shadow, or the afterimage of someone’s smile in the water. His voice, when it comes out, is unnaturally quiet.

“Why are you telling me all this?”

Shouyou stops without warning and Atsumu walks right into him, freezes up, backs away very quickly. He folds his arms and stares at his feet, furrowing his brow. Why is he telling him, actually? What is he doing? Shouyou retraces his mental footsteps. The king had wanted him to find someone else to practice with while Atsumu’s arm healed. Consequently, Shouyou had told him to go screw himself, and Kageyama had helpfully translated that into “I Have Made Plans”. This morning the sun had been especially forgiving on the cold interior of winter, so Shouyou’s mood had been better than it had been all week. He had made good progress on his illegal library activities. He had had a nice nap in the afternoon.

Dragging Atsumu down here in the afternoon had felt like a natural progression of events. Like since the world had not conspired to end on him today, he was allowed to have something for himself.

Shouyou turns this last thought over in his mind. He turns it over again. It begins to spin like a top, reaches the edge of the table, and falls right off of it. Into a dark and faceless abyss.

He tucks a strand of hair absently behind his ear. “You won’t rat me out to anyone. Because you don’t have anyone.”

For a moment, Shouyou thinks he’s finally crossed the line. Then Atsumu clutches at his chest in mock agony, bending over like he’s got a knife through his rib cage and it’s poking at his heart. Underneath the mop of his hair, he’s smiling.

“Well,” he says after a pause, straightening up. He sounds oddly happy about the hole in his chest. “You’re right about that. You are my one connection to this castle, your highness. My one and only.”

Shouyou tries to knee him for speaking like a sword-wielding traveler in a tavern, trying to pick up an attractive person whose name he doesn’t know, but he dodges, like always. His ears are pink, though Shouyou does not notice this. His hands are clenched into fists behind his back, though Shouyou does not notice this either. There are many things that Hinata Shouyou is currently not at liberty to notice. This is fine. All things left behind catch up to you eventually, regardless of whether you are prepared to receive them.

  
⚜

  
Two truths and a lie:

One. Several years before Shouyou was born, the king went on a rampage that lasted for three days and three nights. A servant had made a mistake while mixing his usual evening drink, and though it was by no means a significant error, off by only a few millimeters at best, the king erupted. Several rooms were torn apart and various pieces of furniture destroyed. No human casualties were sustained.

Two. Several years after Shouyou was born, the king went on a rampage that lasted for three years. He conquered twenty-seven kingdoms with grace and splendor, but he did not, in fact, mean to. Each king had attacked first, sending court mages or cavalry, ready to break Solis’s old castle to pieces. Backed into a corner, the king ran each castle to the ground. Thousands died.

Three. Hinata Shouyou doesn’t remember a lot of things from his childhood. He remembers the first time he saw the roses in the garden bloom. He remembers Oikawa taking him out to the fields outside the castle. He remembers when he stopped calling the king ‘father’ and started calling him ‘the king’, as if that false distance would somehow make him feel better about all the ash in his mouth. But there are too many things missing between his eighth, ninth, and tenth years— where was he on the morning of Natsu’s birthday, where was he on the winter solstice? Why won’t anyone tell him about the hole in his head? Hinata Shouyou is missing half of his heart. And until he finds out where it went, he will never be fully human, merely a Pinocchio fashioned out of silk and gold trim, his gloved hands tucked like knives behind his back.

  
⚜

  
When Shouyou was born, the castle held a celebration that lasted for eight days and eight nights. They drank until the chairs turned into tables and the tables turned into horses and the horses were let out into the courtyard to eat all the sakura, which had been blooming of their own accord for several years now, steeped in magic and enchantment. He was their first prince: the crown prince. The life that they hoped would bear witness to all that was good and kind in the world.

So before Natsu was the darling of the castle, Shouyou was the first. The original, apple-cheeked angel with a penchant for soft modes of destruction. He stole bread rinds from the kitchen and dug holes the size of craters in his mother’s rose garden. He built snowmen in the winter that he grew attached to, and then tried to sneak them into his quarters. He often failed to do the things he set his mind to, but that did not deter him. He tried again. And again. And again, and again, and again, until even his parents were sick of hearing about all the curtains he had torn apart in his quest to build a hot air balloon.

“Stop daydreaming,” his father suggested.

“Keep going,” his mother laughed.

“I want to touch the sun,” Shouyou decided, grabbing at its outline with tiny, gloved hands.

The castle, being the centerpiece of their kingdom, was always full of mages, and archivists, and the drab architectural experts his mother had hired to help her with the layout of the secret tunnels, in the way that rooms full of people tend to sound like sunrise. His early days were lively and loud. Momentous. Sometimes there would be news of minor and unresolved incidents; one of the pigs would keel over for no apparent reason, or a hippogriff would crash into the lookout tower. But Shouyou paid them no mind. He had his own preoccupations.

By the time he was old enough to tell the sun apart from the sky, construction of the secret passageways had been finished. The exterior of the castle had not changed, but if you tapped on the innermost wall of the hallway that led to the north tower, just under the torch carved in the likeness of a crow, it would reveal a staircase. And if you went down that staircase you would find yourself in a maze of tunnels, and passageways, and small, tight spaces you could crawl through, if you were careful enough and not afraid of being suffocated to death. Which Shouyou wasn’t. Shouyou, age three and a half, wasn’t afraid of anything.

So one might argue that he grew up in those secret spaces, learning how to fit himself into a world that wouldn’t bend over backwards to meet his expectations. And if one was generous, and all of the people Shouyou knew in his childhood were generous, because they were scared to death of him, then they might argue that Hinata Fuyumi gave him the greatest gift of all before leaving her son, and the rest of the world that she so treasured, behind:

Freedom.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [deeper conversation](https://open.spotify.com/track/0uJrYwDIKZgHLtCY3z36Dj?si=MN7kGryBT02Ng3ORQ6Pc3Q)

“...suitors…”

Shouyou stops chanting for long enough to catch one word from Sakusa, decides that he is unsurprisingly still not worth listening to, and resumes chanting. He keeps it up for as long as he can.

“...the kingdom’s sake…”

This won’t last; he’s running out of breath. More efficient methods will have to be procured.

“...not a child anymore…”

He stands up, still chanting, and walks briskly out of the room, and the next morning the conversation renews itself in the dining hall. February is ending. Everyone in the castle has their eye on the slow crawl of time. Everyone is holding their breath. Everyone is waiting for him to make the move that will determine where this kingdom will go for the next three hundred yards, and no one knows why Oikawa Tooru is included in this equation. But he is.

“Are you not excited?”

The milk in Shouyou’s glass sours immediately. Not by any fault of his own, but when the head of the king’s bizarro court mage cult slides into the seat beside you, and an entourage of silver butterflies alights on your glass, there is always something to mourn. Oikawa tilts his head to the other side, and his numerous gaudy-looking earrings make a delicate sound. The other other side is what he terms his attractive side. He is switching tactics.

“What is the deal with that, what’s his name, Atsumi? Osimi? Osamu?”

Shouyou stands up again. He leaves his things at the table and leaves Oikawa glittering by himself in the middle of the dining hall, and later in the evening Sakusa returns to retrieve them because Sakusa is a nice evil person, and for a while Shouyou thinks he can just close his eyes and pretend nothing’s happening, will happen, will drastically change the alignment of his stars.

“This isn’t.” He stops. Flips through the pages. Flips through them again. Sets that book down on the shelf and retrieves the stack that he has carefully put together over the last few months. Several feet beneath him, Atsumu is humming an old nursery rhyme, while rifling through a book about sheep shearing tactics. He looks up.

“What’s up?”

Shouyou briefly considers setting the library on fire. If he can’t have at its secrets, which he knows are here, which he knows like the star charts of the boy leaning against the wall a few feet away, then no one should. It’s all or nothing. Go big or go home. Hinata Shouyou would like to go home, thank you very much, have a nice day. He shoves Dark Mages That Died Thousands Of Years Ago back into its shelf and climbs down the ladder. He squats on the floor with his head in his hands.

“They’re all wrong. I got the wrong books.”

  
⚜

  
The third rule of being a prince: if there’s a hole in your head in your chest in your heart, don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. It’ll go away.

  
⚜

  
Hinata Shouyou is looking for something that probably does not exist. This is why he hasn’t found it yet, but Hinata Shouyou is also something of a statistical impossibility, and so for the last nineteen years of his life he had allowed himself to believe that, when the time came, he would emerge triumphantly into the light of morning, holding the truth in one clenched fist. Thus far he has emerged with nothing but a habit of dozing off at key points in history. Shouyou would sleep through a storm. He would also, it appears, sleep through yet another one of his horrible private dinners with the king. Kageyama is wrong about one thing. He cannot decline all of the king’s requests.

Like this one. He crosses one leg under the table, changes his mind, and uncrosses it. He sighs.

The king says something awkwardly about looking forward to his son’s birthday, as he slices his cod into tiny pieces.

“Yes, I cannot wait.”

The king cannot wait either. He wants to know if his son has any plans for the Ball.

“There are still four months to go.”

Four months is not a long time.

“I am excited.” Shouyou pinches the skin on the back of his hand. He hates it here, hates the dry diplomacy and how glumly this man looks at him from across the table, as if he is not the one who has ruined everything. The king has ruined everything. Reconciliation is like trying to take a dead horse and make it dance. Shouyou does not dance, on principle. “Is that not enough for you?”

It is. But it isn’t. But it is. The king leaves the room first, his cod uneaten, his glass half-empty. Shouyou stares at his hands, and wonders why god made him so cruel. He does not want to stay bitter. He does not want to hold kindness at bay. But the bay is wide and deep, and the waters are gray, and no matter how hard he tries, he cannot bring himself to love it. He cannot say those words: I forgive you.

The next day, he sneaks into the stables during a break in Sakusa’s attention span, feeling the sick chemical burn of emotional and physical exhaustion. Hippogriff number one is eating ungraciously from his trough. He doesn’t seem to give much of a shit about anything, let alone the prince in the pressed white tunic standing in his space, so Shouyou leans against a wall beside him and complains about his week, while folding a stalk of hay into a knot. It keeps breaking. He keeps having to bend over and grab a new stalk. Everything is terrible.

“I’ve come to collect his royal highness, Hinata Shouyou,” comes a voice from outside the stables, a few minutes, or perhaps several centuries, later. “His personal attendant tells me he’s in a god-awful mood. I’m here to improve on that.”

Hippogriff number one continues munching on his food. He doesn’t seem to give a shit about Atsumu, either. “And how are you going to do that?”

Atsumu sticks his head in through the door. His nose is red from the cold, and his eyes are smiling.

“Care for a game of tag?”

Shouyou doesn’t think to ask why Atsumu is confident that he will not get lost in the secret tunnels, trap himself in a room with no exit, and die, unexpectedly, of shock. He has been showing Atsumu around there for a while now, half out of boredom, half out of a strange interest he cannot place. Atsumu seems more than entertained by the strange assortment of rooms filled with trinkets and dead things, though for Shouyou, it’s a refuge.

So Shouyou doesn’t find his protracted interest odd. He doesn’t think of the moral implications of treating a series of elaborate secrets as a funhouse. But, and he feels obligated to clarify this as Atsumu gently manhandles him back into the castle, he does tell him he’s wrong.

“You’re wrong,” Shouyou says, rolling his shoulders as they head up the stairs. “I’m not in a bad mood.”

“With all due respect, your highness—”

“And why tag? That’s a child’s game.”

“You are nineteen.”

Shouyou picks up his pace. He reaches the top of the stairs and resolutely keeps walking. Atsumu catches up to him with a few long strides, which Shouyou decides is insensitive of him, and rude. Shouyou should have requested for a shorter sword instructor. And a weaker one. He should have expressly said no to sword instructors with sandpaper hair arranged attractively across one side of their face. But hindsight, as they say, is sharp enough to shoot an angel with. And Shouyou has spent a lot of time looking back over his shoulder, wondering when his mistakes will catch up to him.

He can hear Atsumu’s grin in his voice. “So—?”

“I will be twenty in June,” Shouyou says obstinately. “There will be an elaborate and horrible coming-of-age ceremony and someone will break out the wine, and we will all go down in flames.”

He pauses. He surveys the hallway, and Atsumu’s expression, which is relaxed, half-concerned, his smile crooked. Some things change. Some people live forever.

Then he taps Atsumu lightly on the shoulder, throws himself against the side of the wall, and falls sideways into one of those long, dark tunnels that runs parallel to the hallways in the north wing.

You’re it.

  
⚜

  
The words ‘you’re it’ have a number of hidden implications, depending on one’s dietary preferences and record of past transgressions. For instance, if you are an ordinary attendee at your friend’s wedding and you catch the bouquet of flowers that gets tossed from the revolving stage supported entirely by magical geese, four floors above your heads, ‘you’re it’ means ‘you’re next’. Or, you might be a child of barely seven or eight years with a big black hood over your head, being asked to carry the mantle of history on your shoulders. ‘You’re it’, in this case, means ‘we don’t want our sins, so we’re giving them to you’, and also, ‘we are sorry but not enough to prove it’.

Conversely, if you are the crown prince of a fast-dying kingdom with a sack of potatoes sitting on the throne, and you have just had the most unpleasant week of your life, ‘you’re it’ means ‘run’. It means ‘run faster’. It means ‘catch me if you can, because I know you can, because you’re good at this, because you’re funny as hell and the only person in this castle I’d trust to open a bottle of wine without crying about the mess it might make’.

You’re messy. You’re a wreck. You’re young, mean, and gorgeous. Your name is Miya Atsumu and you took this job for one reason but you are doing this, all of this, for another.

Your name is Miya Atsumu. You have a jewel affixed to the collar of your coat, and you are one of the crown prince’s people.

Your name is Miya Atsumu. You are twenty-one this year. But the hard, unpopular truth is, your time stopped when you were nine. Ever since then, all you have been doing is walking on the spot, walking and walking and walking, like someone tied to a stake in the ground, trying to escape from the hands of your own shadow on the wall.

  
⚜

  
The first five minutes are a blur. Atsumu chases him into the heart of the maze, making half-hearted grabs at his coat while Shouyou leaps and flies ahead, laughing through the light. They vault over furniture and jeweled wardrobes and stone pedestals of tortoises, their footsteps echoing down the hallways like glass marbles tossed from the ledge of a table. Atsumu chases him past all of his favorite places, the rooms he grew up making mysteries out of, the secrets he promised to never show anyone, and if Shouyou tries hard enough he swears he can feel the wind in his hair. He swears he’s thirteen and a half again, running through the cornfields outside the city with Oikawa Tooru, before he pierced his ears and started using magic as a proxy for his emotions. The light is so gold it’s almost white, so white it’s almost blinding. He’s running so fast, he’s almost off his feet.

But wait. He stops suddenly, the scatter of his footsteps swallowed by an unwanted, unasked-for quiet. Who’s still following?

Something has changed in the last two minutes. He turns around, breathing hard, the sweat dripping into his eyes. Behind him the hallway stretches out like a river. Here and there he can make out pockmarks in the floor, the sides of the walls. These rooms will let you run away from yourself. They have secrets within secrets; eyes within eyes.

Shouyou starts back down the hallway, the thud of one pair of boots on the floor sharp enough to cut your ears on. Somewhere out of sight, the sound of water dripping into a puddle can be heard. Somewhere out of sight, something is waiting to be found. Somewhere out of sight, Miya Atsumu, stuck in a room with no entry or exit or voice with which to convey the immensity of his concern, is beginning to realize that you can, in fact, die from a splinter in your finger. Shouyou does not know this yet. But he will.

  
⚜

  
When Shouyou was five, he got lost in the castle. He was frequently lost, but just as frequently found within the first ten to fifteen minutes, which was why this particular incident stood out in the memory of all who bore witness to it. This time, Shouyou was not found. He sat on the edge of the dusty, moth bitten bed and kicked his boots against the side of it. He waited obediently for an attendant to stick their head through the open door. Sakusa, perhaps, or Riko, or one of the chefs. The chefs were nice to him. He got bored of kicking his boots and began to unravel the bedsheets fiber by fiber. Time passed; so did his interest in the things around him.

The room was old and mildewed, and clearly had not been used for several years. A thick layer of dust covered every available surface, and when he threw the closet doors open he found a dead rat inside. There were no insects clinging to its body, and there was little to no smell. It had been mummified in its own grave.

Shouyou was not particularly shaken. At the age of five he had discovered that the castle of Solis was not so much a castle as it was a maze. If you pressed the right books or turned the right knobs, half of the rooms would reveal themselves to be the keepers of hidden doors. These doors led to secret rooms, hallways, and once, though he had not found it again since, an indoor pool.

It made sense, then, that sometimes things would die here. It was hard enough to get in. To get out, you needed to be a certain kind of lucky. You needed to be him.

But of course, Shouyou was the only Shouyou in the world, and he was happy to bear the title. He liked being called the little prince, and he liked the sakura flavored cookies the royal chefs would leave out for him, even though his father complained that magically-enhanced foods were bad for your digestive system. Shouyou did not care about his digestive system. It would simply have to cooperate.

The hours stretched long and languid between his teeth. Air passed, dimly, over and around his body. At one point he felt his stomach growl and, panicking, tried to find the exit again. But he soon gave up. He was fatigued. He was sleepy. The exhaustion swept over him like a freshly-washed bedsheet, clean and large enough to cover every inch of his skin. Shouyou lay down. He closed his eyes.

He was found three days later, close enough to death that even his mother, calm as she tended to be about all matters of supreme importance, almost turned one of the attendants into an ice block in her haste to reach him. They were all horrified. No one knew how the young prince had survived for all those days by himself, in that walled-off world where no sunlight or air could reach. It seemed a miracle that he had not died at all.

Later, much later, his father would reflect upon the image of his son curled into a ball at the foot of the bed, his face pale, his skin damp with sweat and fever. And he would recall that the embroidered black gloves that he always wore were discarded in a pile above his head.

His father would find this interesting. The king, who was in almost all regards the exact same person as the man who had raised a son, but also completely different, would see an opportunity, and rise with an unheard-of grace and sanctimony to grasp it.

  
⚜

  
When Miya Atsumu was five, he had a family. But we already know this.

When Miya Atsumu was five, he had. A pet? A dog? A fox, maybe, small and wild-eyed and loyal. The fox went everywhere with him. His name was Kaoru.

When Miya Atsumu was five he had everything. We have never known this. Hinata Shouyou does not know this. This is the part of the story he has not been made privy to, the part of the story Atsumu keeps tucked in his breast pocket like a secret. It is only one secret. There are many, many more.

Keep it together, Atsumu. You cannot fall apart. You have one chance to get things right. You have one chance to make it up to him.

  
⚜

  
“Your highness. Is that you?”

“No it’s some other weirdo that happens to be wandering around down here. A freak killer. Yes, it’s me.”

“I thought you were going to leave me here forever.”

“Why would I do that? Hold on. I’m going to get you out.”

“...Can you keep talking?”

“What do you want me to talk about?”

“Anything. Tell me about your mother. Your favorite fairytale. Oikawa Tooru.”

“Atsumu. I don’t want to talk about Oikawa.”

“Okay. Anything but Oikawa Tooru.”

“Well. Um. There was this one time, before I was born, when my mother set a bunch of endangered, immortal pigeons free in the castle. They were the last of their kind, and she had come across them during an exotic animals auction in the city. The royal chefs wanted to try a new kind of cuisine. The court mages wanted to turn them into familiars. But my mother thought they were too beautiful to be turned into human playthings. She wanted to give them the choice to leave, or stay. So she took them to the great hall, and threw open all the windows, and then she set them free.

“The pigeons chose to stay. They built nests high up in the rafters of the great hall and laid eggs, and had children, and then their children moved on to other parts of the castle. The baths. The east and west towers. The throne room.

“My mother’s long gone, but the pigeons are still here. They’re kind of everywhere. And I guess I— Oh. Atsumu I did it. Atsumu. I’m coming in.”

  
⚜

  
Standing in the doorway, surrounded by dust and shadow, Shouyou feels light-headed. But Atsumu is the one who is white-faced, his expression raw, his hands trembling as Shouyou folds his own hands on top and holds them in place. Atsumu grips back with an intensity Shouyou has never seen in him before. He presses their foreheads together. Shouyou’s skin burns at the point of contact.

They stay there for several minutes, listening to the sound of air being recycled into life, being turned into colors on the wall. Then Shouyou asks, very quietly, if Atsumu is ready to go, and Atsumu mumbles something incoherent, and then they’re heading back down that hallway, towards the beating heart of the castle.

  
⚜

  
“It’s fine, your highness.”

“What, are you going to say they’ll grow back again?”

Atsumu looks off to one side, chewing on his lip.

“I mean. No. But also yes.”

Shouyou winds the gauze methodically around Atsumu’s finger with one hand, while the other cradles the flat of his palm. He’s careful not to bind it too tight. He’s overly conscious of Atsumu’s expressions.

Atsumu, for what it’s worth, spends most of his time looking off in another direction. His gaze flickers from the shelves stocked with cured eyeballs and herbs, to the miniature forest growing on the other side of the infirmary. He looks like he wants to say something. He looks like he’s in pain.

“It’s not about whether it heals,” Shouyou replies decisively, holding Atsumu’s hand up to the light like he’s admiring it. The window in the infirmary is large and diamond-shaped, overlooking the castle courtyard. Through it, the light does not reach very far, leaving most of the infirmary cast in rich shades of green. “It’s about whether it heals properly.”

Shouyou cuts the bandage free from the roll. “Other hand.”

“You don’t have to do this. Really.”

He lowers Atsumu’s hand to his knee and reaches for the other. “I want to.”

The infirmary tends to be empty at this time of the day. Since the king backed off on his string of accidental conquests it has seen little more than the occasional member of the cavalry, betrayed by their hippogriff friend, or the bedraggled victims of the royal kitchen’s baking experiments. Most ailments can be cured by Oikawa Tooru, if only he can be contacted, which is nearly never. But most ailments are not self-inflicted. And most people are not Miya Atsumu.

By the time he’d found him earlier, locked up in a room barely the size of a broom closet, Atsumu had essentially destroyed his fingernails, and fingers, trying to tear his way out. Everything about him was faint and unsteady; his voice, his gaze, his slender, swaying frame. The words, when they finally fled from him, were raw. He said _thank you for finding me_ and it sounded like _I died five times over while I was waiting for you to reach me._ Right there and then, Shouyou felt his chest cave in.

“Not a fan of enclosed spaces,” Shouyou starts to bind his other fingers, watching Atsumu from under his bangs. “Are you?”

Atsumu laughs for the first time since they returned. It’s quiet and coarse, not at all like the bright thing Shouyou sometimes hears drifting down the hallway. This Atsumu bites his lip when he’s thinking, and fingers his earring when he talks. This Atsumu is see-through. Like a shard of glass, held up to the light.

“Well, no, not really. Not at all. No.” He touches the back of his neck.

Shouyou cuts in quickly, “if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine with me. I promise.”

“No, no— it’s fine.” Atsumu breathes through his mouth, his lips forming a small ‘o’. His free hand curls loosely into a fist.

“So, uh. A long time ago.”

Shouyou waits. Atsumu frowns at him, a little embarrassed, a little uneasy. Beyond the window, the inner court is quiet.

“A long time ago there was a boy.

“He lived happily with his family and all that stuff. But one day someone decided that they wanted his family dead. So his parents told him to hide in the closet, and then they locked it from the outside. The boy sat in silence for a long time. The boy waited patiently to be let out. He waited and he waited and he waited. He waited until he was too thirsty and hungry to wait any longer, and finally broke out of the closet by himself.”

“But by then everyone in his family was already dead.” Atsumu shrugs. “And that’s how this boy got so scared.”

When Shouyou was five.

“Atsumu, I—”

“Makes me look weak, doesn’t it?” he smiles, small and tight.

Shouyou’s chest is burning like there’s something sharp stuck in it, clawing the flesh off his lungs and burrowing into his heart. Shouyou’s chest is burning.

“No,” he says, slowly, the gauze falling from his hands. “What the fuck. You’re the strongest person I know.”

“Ha. Not your father?”

He doesn’t think twice before replying. “My father isn’t shit.”

Atsumu leans back until his shoulder hits the wall. “Huh,” he says. His expression is unreadable.

Shouyou’s mother used to tell him that forgiveness was a way of staying alive. She was good at unconventional things, like turning rain into snow and getting out of tight corners. The castle’s tunnel system was built as much for her children as it was for herself, for the fleeting youthful thing that lived in her heart, because she enjoyed the fundamental adventure of it all. She was the north star of Solis. The end of winter and the slow rollover to spring, that morning in which you rose out of bed with your boots still unlaced and found that, overnight, all the flowers in the garden had come into full bloom.

Shouyou wonders if Atsumu has ever forgiven himself for anything. He laughs like a constellation on wheels and walks with a lazy, confident swagger. He has the kind of voice that sticks in your head and has to be shaken out through one ear. He knows exactly how to butt heads with all the people you typically want to avoid butting heads with, as if he gets a kick out of watching his own skin bruise, but is this a sign of success, or is it survival? Oikawa Tooru has sicced his butterflies on him before; Kageyama Tobio has attempted to burn his vegetables. Each and every time, Atsumu had emerged from the flames a little worse for wear, his hair a little out of place. Hurt, but unhurt. Indifferent.

“You finally called him ‘father’,” Atsumu points out, interrupting his train of thought.

Shouyou jumps. He returns quickly to his work with the bandages, hunching his shoulders to avoid his gaze.

“Slip of the tongue,” he says.

“Not a fan of your own father?”

“Not a fan of any of this.” He lifts his hands away to gesture broadly at the infirmary, with its pale green light and speckled walls, the courtyard outside the window, the castle as a whole. He dips his head. “I don’t want to turn twenty.”

Atsumu hums in response, noncommittal, neither acknowledging nor denying the sliver of truth in Shouyou’s words. There’s a look in his eyes, like he’s seeing something that’s not here. A hippogriff with a red beak. A closet with a broken lock. A boy, just like him, but different.

“Hey,” he says when he’s finally done being a chore, and the sun is starting to dip, having grown lonely in its solitary position in the sky. He holds out his own hands, palms up.

Atsumu stares at him blankly.

“My gloves. Take them off.”

He narrows his eyes.

“Is this a trick?”

“Have you ever cared about that kind of thing?”

“Are you sure?”

For someone who does everything with so much haste and drama and cinematic flair, Atsumu takes his time removing his gloves. He fits a hand underneath Shouyou’s and the other on top. Then he tugs, very gently, at the black leather.

Shouyou watches all of this happen with his heart in his mouth. It shouldn’t be there; his hands shouldn’t be here; he shouldn’t be telling Atsumu anything. This is one of the things about being a prince, after all: there’s a line in the sand between you and the rest of the world. You make all the calls, so you have to be the one to receive them, too.

Watching Atsumu’s eyes go wide, feeling his thumb in the warm, ink-stained center of Shouyou’s palm, he thinks with bitterness that it’s a strange feeling being the one giving away the secrets, instead of asking for them. It’s strange being the one holding the glass flower. Like cutting your chest open, and closing your eyes, and hoping the other party doesn’t take any more than they need. Which is everything.

  
⚜

  
An eye for an eye, an arm for an arm. Though I told the truth, anyway.

  
⚜

  
Shouyou tells him everything. He tells him about the markings on his palms and the gods they belong to. He tells him how they were put there to keep the rest of the castle safe from his powers, to keep the castle safe from him. He tells him how he’s killed a man before, even if everyone acts like it was a trick of the light, even if the weak, soulless king that used to be his father won’t look him in the eye, when he says ‘Shouyou, you’re still dreaming’.

Gloves and tattoos and gloves. Two layers of ancient, powerful spellwork. Two layers, built expressly to keep Hinata Shouyou’s magic in.

And yet Miya Atsumu does not tell him everything. Miya Atsumu takes the one ghost he’s never stopped dreaming about and he folds it up, punches it in, boils it down to nothing more than a sob story and a half, and when he looks at Shouyou with armageddon on the tip of his tongue, he thinks fuck. I can’t do it. All the light in the infirmary has gathered in Shouyou’s hair, like it’s trying to reach his bird-boned heart. Shouyou’s touch is warm and shy and genuine. He looks hurt on his behalf, like he’s the one who walked into a closet and forgot to walk out.

So when Miya Atsumu opens his mouth and says ‘the boy’s parents told him to hide and locked the door’ he doesn’t mention that there were two boys in the closet. He doesn’t mention that the other boy looked just like him, had led the same life as him, had flounced around in regalia in the same rooms and turreted towers as him. He doesn’t mention that he was just short of nine years old when a kid in a black cloak walked into his house and set his entire family on fire, and that after that they came for the pair of twins hidden in the closet.

He doesn’t mention that his twin escaped from the closet first, Atsumu clinging to his hand like it was a lifeline or the key to the universe, and gently pulled away.

Don’t open the door no matter what, he whispered. Don’t come out.

And then the royal entourage entered the room, and Miya Osamu laughed and said, ‘congratulations, I’m the only one left’, and Atsumu sat in that closet with his hands pressed against his ears, feeling the screaming weight of the universe bearing down on his head. And in spite of that, in spite of everything he felt slipping slowly out of his grasp, he heard everything.

  
⚜

  
The fourth rule of being a prince: trust blindly. Trust wrongly. You will grow from this process; you will.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [city of stars](https://open.spotify.com/track/5BMwpS4iYKR30kq9U9beaT?si=E3rK6yofQP6vL81yHvM2dQ)

“Hey, you.”

“It’s not ‘hey you’, it’s Atsumu.”

“Okay. Oi, you.”

Atsumu pulls away, reluctantly, from his afternoon practice. They’ve finally put the courtyard back together after a month and a half. As March walks blearily past the walls of the castle and into its shiny gold hallways, it is pleased to find that nothing is out of place.

Atsumu presses the business end of his sword into the rock, leaning his weight on one hip. “Need something from me?”

“No.” Oikawa Tooru watches him from under one of those creepy sakura trees. His arms are folded and his head is tilted back, like he is balancing something on the tip of his nose. A breeze blows past and his bangs fall into his eyes. “I was just thinking you looked funny.” He combs a hand through his hair and the butterflies flitting around his head shine, for a moment, a little brighter.

“There’s only one other person in this castle who gets a look in their eyes like that.”

Atsumu raises his eyebrows. “That so?”

“Mm.” Oikawa holds up a manicured hand, studying his nails with interest. More sounds from the sky. More rustling in the trees. “And he’s the one person you’re not allowed to have.”

Oikawa Tooru is being horribly, unbelievably petty. He is being everything his thirteen-year-old self promised he would never grow up to become, like a liar, a snitch, and a possessive asshole. He is playing the devil’s advocate for a king that he, like the rest of this kingdom, has long since lost faith in. Atsumu does not know any of this. High up in the eastern tower, Hinata Shouyou is trying to memorize the names of all the medicinal herbs in the kingdom, and Atsumu does not know any of this. Atsumu only knows what he’s been told. Which does not include what to do when you are confronted with a castle full of secrets. Which does not include what to do when the prince you are sent to train into a soldier turns around, and turns the crumpled wad of your chest into an actual heart. Pinocchio the fool, human once again. If only for a minute, if only for a day.

He picks up his sword and swings it up over one shoulder. “The fuck does that mean?”

Oikawa smiles at him like a kind, faceless god who is going to kill him one day in his sleep. His golden staff sits in the crook of one arm, the jewel atop it revolving in slow circles. Oikawa will not kill him. Atsumu knows this, the way he knows Oikawa views him as a minor threat to the prince’s happiness. But if Atsumu slips up, if Atsumu falls down the stairs and lands on the wrong knee, if everything he’s been holding together in his head for the last twenty years falls apart at his feet, then Oikawa will never let him go. All the old mages are like this. Atsumu squares his shoulders.

“Be good to him, by all means. Treat him like you always have. But don’t take him away from us, you hear me? We need him. More than you ever will.”

  
⚜

  
This dream again. His hands are bare like they always are when he gets here, but in this dream they fall off of their own accord. No scuffling, no stranger with a face of glass, no violence. One moment he’s standing in the middle of the room that he’s slowly coming to know, and the next he’s staring at the stumps of his wrists again. His hands are on the floor. His hands are walking through the open door, into the next room.

Then light. Then his hands in the doorway are going up in flames, doing a scottish waltz, fanning the fire into the room that he can’t see past. There’s screaming, like there always is when he has this dream, when he has the same goddamn dream, only this time it isn’t his. He thinks that he should know this voice, but he doesn’t. The room is getting hotter. The hands dancing on the floor are getting blurrier. He squats down on the floor and tries to shield his eyes, but his wrists start spurting blood and the blood gets all over his face. It splatters onto his clothes, which are white one moment and then black and then white again, black again, and the child in the other room is still screaming, and Shouyou can’t see a thing, and then it stops. The fire is gone. His hands are gone.

Silence descends like a held breath.

A charred figure emerges from the doorway. He has a piece of the night sky for a face, but he looks familiar.

“You did this to me,” he says. “Are you happy now?”

Shouyou cracks his mouth open. His lungs tumble out.

“No,” he rasps, falling to his knees, choking around the knobs of his spine. Everything inside of him is welling to the surface. The memories, the dreams, the skin of his teeth of his soul. “I’m not, I’m not fucking happy at a—”

“—what’s this about a suitor?”

Atsumu looks at him expectantly. There’s soft, wet grass all around and the electric blue of the garden’s flowers above their head. Atsumu is braiding a chain of daisies into Natsu’s hair. Natsu is making a flower crown out of roses.

Shouyou sits up. He tastes blood; he must have bitten the inside of his cheek again. He scrubs a hand down his face, stopping at the collar of his uniform to run a finger over the royal jewel. He’s still here. Everything’s where it should be. At least for now.

“It’s not important,” he says thickly. The words don’t come out the way he wants them to and Atsumu tilts his head in question, but Natsu is unperturbed. She finishes her flower crown and stands up, turning around to give it to him. Atsumu accepts the gift with both hands and grins at her. Natsu dips her head shyly.

Later when she’s been herded off by another one of the royal cooks, off-duty but always on-duty when it comes to searching for the missing princess, Atsumu takes off the flower crown. He places it carefully on Shouyou’s head, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear.

“Bad dream?”

Shouyou blinks, realizing his eyes are wet. It must be the weather, or something in the air. He shrugs noncommittally.

“Bad dream,” Atsumu repeats, more for himself than anything. He shrugs out of his coat and drapes it around Shouyou’s shoulders. Now Shouyou looks like a fool because he’s already wearing his red cloak underneath it, even if it’s only on one shoulder. Now Shouyou looks like one of Atsumu’s people, and isn’t that a funny thought. He’d like to be Atsumu’s person. Let Atsumu be the prince for once; Shouyou can swing the big sword around with reckless abandon. He laughs to himself.

“What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing.” He rubs the sleep out of his eyes.

“I was just thinking, it’s funny how fast things change without you realizing it.”

  
⚜

  
If you pay close enough attention to the comings and goings of the castle, you will discover a certain horse-drawn cart that heads out every morning before sunrise. It’s helmed by a pair of palace guards who elbow each other as the cart clatters across the drawbridge, making small talk about the state of the librarian’s guild. Behind their epaulettes and their sheathed swords, the cart is stacked with wheat, potatoes, bits of lace and lattice. Things the castle no longer has any use for.

There used to be several horse-drawn carts each morning, each helmed by their own pair of guards. But now, there is just the one. Now the guards make the journey in solitude, trundling through the forest under the bleak cover of darkness. It does not take them very long. Most days it is half an hour at best, forty-five minutes if they encounter one of the giants that roam the undergrowth. They do their best to stay away from the giants. But one can only see so much without magic.

They emerge from the other side of the forest just as dawn begins to break. Now the castle is nothing more than a speck of white behind them, rising out of the treetops like a misshapen fist. Before them, a dirt-trodden path unspools across a wide expanse of farmland. The sun pours out of the sky, warming the guards’ faces, tickling the horses’ ears.

“Are we there yet?” Shouyou asks, sticking his head out of the side of the cart.

“No,” says Futakuchi. He is annoyed, even if he doesn’t sleep and he doesn’t have bones. This is the tenth or twentieth time the prince has asked this question, and his respective tenth or twentieth time responding. One cannot turn down a request from the crown prince, regardless of how much it makes you want to rip out your teeth.

A pause. Five seconds, maybe eight. “...Are we there yet?”

Futakuchi blows his bangs out of his eyes. “Are you always like this?”

Aone interrupts the conversation with a hand on Futakuchi’s knee. “Several more minutes,” he says. Futakuchi glares at him, but relaxes back into his seat. “Ten, at worst.”

Shouyou sticks his head back inside. He has cleared out a space for himself in the cart, tucked away between the straw and the rucksacks. When they hit a bump in the road, the potatoes begin to tremble. Shouyou pushes their sacks back against the wall, his hands flat against the fabric, and hopes for the best.

True to his word, Aone springs the cart open several minutes later. Futakuchi picks up the fallen goods. He gives Shouyou the stink eye. Shouyou beams at him and pats his shoulder.

“We depart for the castle at dusk,” Aone repeats for the third time this morning, as if afraid that Shouyou will forget this reminder, and all the ones before, and be stranded in the city. Which, to be fair, is something that has happened before. Multiple times. It has never ended well, though it has never ended terribly either.

Shouyou salutes them as they pack the potatoes back in, climb onto the cart, and rattle away. He allows himself a moment to bask in the clean air of the morning, away from the castle. The city bows to him. Its buildings are lopsided, most of them two or three storeys tall, many of them colliding with each other at unexpected junctures in the street. Peasant’s architecture, Sakusa might say. Smart, economical. Unattractive.

Regardless, Shouyou thinks, stretching his back, swinging his arms over his head, they are more real than the jewel around his neck will ever be. He swallows a yawn, swallows yesterday’s miseries, and takes the first step down the brick road.

  
⚜

  
Regalia is the word for their habit. Fine, decorative items, symbolizing status over self. Gold soutache, gold epaulettes, gold trimmings. Gold teeth. Their regalia sets them apart from the rest of the castle’s inhabitants, even as they live through the same seasons, the same storms, the same rooms with their tapestries and their goblets. Shouyou has never quite gotten used to the weight on his shoulders; he merely learned how to carry it quietly. 

Today he isn’t wearing the red, fur-trimmed cloak and he isn’t wearing the gold-and-red sash. Instead, he has on a black cloak, and the black cloak has a black hood, but the sun is too hot for hiding. He is not trying to hide today, anyway. The people will recognize him by the color of his hair, as they always have. He turns the corner, into the marketplace.

He is greeted, immediately, by a throng of voices. Good morning, your highness, what finds you out here today? Can I get you something from this season’s harvest, the tomatoes are especially fine. Good morning, your highness, how is your father? No, really, how is your father?

Shouyou shakes hands and accepts gifts and pays them back tenfold with gold coins, silver coins, refusing their change with both hands. He says I’m here to inspect the fields, thank you but let me pay for the apples, the king is as he always is. He doesn’t ask if they’re holding up, as winter begins to walk away. He doesn’t ask if they’ll be fine.

“It’s like this every time,” he says out loud, as he squeezes through a gap in the crowd, and escapes into a back alley. It’s a reminder to himself as much as it is an admonishment. After all these years and all these moments, he still hasn’t gotten used to being loved; he still doesn’t know what to do with all these apples. He bites into one as he walks into another part of the city, this one much quieter.

Solis, itself, wasn’t always like this, he thinks, stepping around a crack in the floor. In his memory the city looked brighter, somehow. Sharper. The buildings remained crooked and the music lively, but there was no fear to be found under drain covers or beneath the shoes of unsuspecting children. In his memory, it cut its own place out of the silhouette of the sky.

The storefronts here are mostly shuttered, mostly boarded-up. No one comes out of an open doorway to cradle his hands like jewels. Shouyou walks down the crooked road, with a crooked heart and a crooked head, humming quietly under his breath. The apple core in his hand oxidizes in slow motions. His crooked history follows at his heels, like a dog.

He wonders what Atsumu would think of the single black bird that dips into a broken window, and emerges with a mouse in its beak. If he would feel the same frustration. The same afterthought of melancholy.

  
⚜

  
“It’s yours for the price of three horses.”

“I don’t have three horses.”

“Well then, sir, what do you have?”

Shouyou fumbles around under his cloak. His pouch is empty again. He should have been more careful about not getting ahead of himself, the way he always gets when surrounded by people who think the sun is in their eyes, but it isn’t every day he can get out of the castle. It isn’t every day he can give without taking back.

The old shopkeeper twirls a strand of silver around one finger. Her hair is bunched up with a jade hairpin, though her clothes are humble, their colors plain. She looks at home in the darkness as she watches Shouyou struggle, her expression calm as tea-leaves in water.

He had not been drawn in by the smell of saffron. The saffron is lovely, he admits, checking the pockets of his pants, the one on his shirt. But it was the face of this lady in the foggy window, like a ghost or a midsummer’s dream, that caught his attention. She looks as if she has lived through a war, and then another. The tables in her store crowded with plants, the plants crowded with names.

“Do I know you from somewhere?” he asks, stalling for time.

“No.” She reaches for the earring, plucking it from its stand. “But you know my grandson’s friend.”

His fingers catch on the jewel fastened to his neck. He takes it off his collar, holding it up to the light. Is this something he should be pawning off on the outskirts of the city? No. Does he have any idea what the storekeeper is talking about? No. Is he going to do it? The storekeeper dangles the earring enticingly close to his face, as if hoping that Shouyou will reach out and bite it out of her hands, like a rabid dog with a love of jade objects. Yes. Yes he will.

“How about this?” he asks. It is clearly the royal jewel. He is clearly handing her the royal jewel. He watches her face for a reaction, for the slightest twitch of her mouth or the lift of an eyebrow. But she only smiles at him again, quietly pleased.

She pries the jewel carefully from his fingers and produces a magnifying glass from behind her back. Shouyou wonders with interest what else she keeps there; does she have knives? Does she have magic? The air in the store thrums like a heartbeat, as if there is something beneath his feet. He can feel it, even now.

“This will do,” she announces after a minute. She shakes his hand, holding his gloved hand between two of her own with filial tenderness. Not once does her gaze travel to the orange of his hair. Not once does she stop to stare at the collar of his uniform, peeking out from under his cloak. In a moment of weakness, Shouyou finds himself thinking that he would have liked to have known someone like her, who seems to have grown tired of searching for cracks in the concrete. Perhaps she would have forgiven him.

The storekeeper slips his purchase into a leather pouch. “May I ask why this caught your eye?” she asks, not stalling for anything, plainly curious.

“Oh,” Shouyou says, startled. He touches the back of his neck, suddenly embarrassed. “It, ah, reminded me of someone I know. I think he has something similar?”

“So.” She claps her hands together. “A gift.”

Shouyou looks off to the side of the store. He wonders how many visitors walk in each day, how many of them happen to own three horses. Is there glamor to be had in jade? Is he feeding his own ego, even as he tries to give again without taking? Even now?

He nods.

“It is a good gift,” says the old shopkeeper, who has kept all sorts of items over the years, in the soles of her shoes, in her hair, in the gaps between her teeth, where old age has cleared out space for death to move in in the fall. Time has taught her things she cannot put into words. So instead she puts up jewelry in a faded storefront, and waits for people to ask.

Her grandson walks steadily across the continent, with a garden on his back as she speaks, spelling out magic in tea-leaves. Because there is magic in these things, in people and the objects they leave behind, but there is magic to be had in gifts, too. A give-and-take. A give-and-give. One should never underestimate the power of a gift, and the intentions with which it is given.

Hinata Shouyou wants to be forgiven. She can see this in his eyes, in the way he hides his hands nervously behind his back. There is something in this boy which is trying to get out. He is patting it down with his shoes, even now. Trying to keep the earth steady.

This is as much as she can do. Her silk road ends here, with the boy tucking the pouch into his pocket and his lingering gaze on the sign in front of her store. “Thank you, Kita-san,” he says, and she nods, wondering if she should have held his hands longer. There were other things she could have said. There are always a thousand ways to reshape the story. But she suspects he has his own person, this boy with the golden eyes, so she steps back. She steps back as he walks down the street, his cloak flapping behind him. She steps back into the world, away from the one where boys are made of steel, and steel is another name for death, and death is the answer to sadness, instead of the call.

  
⚜

  
He meets Futakuchi and Aone at the edge of the city, beside the field full of flowers and the place where he had hopped off the cart in the morning. Aone looks tired. Futakuchi looks twice as tired. Shouyou forgets to ask how much longer it is until they get back to the castle, and falls asleep to the sound of the giants’ footsteps in the distance.

They deposit him in the courtyard, long after night has fallen. Shouyou hopes distantly that Natsu has been caught by one of the off-duty cooks and shepherded to bed, and makes a note to check on her before he retires to his own quarters.

On the other side of the castle, Atsumu frowns as he holds a candle up to his face, trying to illuminate the path before him. He follows this path as best as he can, taking most of the right turns, avoiding most of the right places. He slips out of the castle before the drawbridge is retracted. At the edge of the woods, someone is waiting for him.

Not everyone has lived through a war. Some of them are looking to start one.

“How’s it going in there?”

Atsumu shrugs, his bandaged hands shoved in his pockets. Winter is taking its sweet time leaving, like a lover at the doorway with a heart heavy as steel. He does not want to be here either. He does not want, particularly, to be anywhere.

“All right,” he says. “It’s going all right.”

  
⚜

  
As you know, Solis was a kingdom founded on peace. Our ancestors were pacifists, and so were their ancestors, and so were their own ancestors. They avoided every conflict that came their way, even if they had a stake in them. Or perhaps it was precisely because they had a stake at all. What do you think, your highness? Your highness? Excuse me?

Yes, hello, good morning to you as well. As I was saying, your pacifist ancestors disliked violence and made it a point to never involve themselves in the wars that raged across the region, and killed so terribly many. Do you think that was a good thing? No? Why?

I see. I see that your education has been insufficient. Don’t ask me what I think, my name is Sakusa Kiyoomi the personal attendant and advisor of the prince, not Sakusa Kiyoomi the warmonger. Or fearmonger. Unlike you, your highness, I adhere to a strict set of morals.

For better or worse, it is clear that your father thought differently. Don’t give me that look, a father is a father and you will have to face the fact sooner or later. Yours believed in pacifism. I know, you think I am joking. In an alarming twist of events, I am not. Your highness. I do not lie.

Quiz time: if your father believed so strongly in pacifism, how did he acquire the name Hiroto the Vanquisher? You have thirty seconds. Write your answer in cursive on the sheet of paper before you.

Your thirty seconds are over. What have you written? I see that you have written a load of garbage.

Hiroto the Vanquisher did not, in fact, actively try to vanquish anyone. Hiroto the Vanquisher was simply unfortunate. He happened to find himself caught in the crossfire, and before he knew it, there were troops marching up to the gate of his castle, and many people were dead. Your father acted out in self-defense, Shouyou. He never meant to kill them.

You are giving me that look again. You are always giving me that look. Why don’t you save that look for someone who probably deserves it more, like your horrible sword instructor? I do not lie, your highness. I do not lie.

Besides— I see you are falling asleep again. Do you not sleep at night? Never mind. Don’t answer that. Besides, your highness, the era of Hiroto the Vanquisher is over. This is a history lesson, not a lesson on ethics. Take away what you wish from your father’s past behavior. But it was what protected you and her highness after her majesty passed on.

Your father kept you safe in a world that wanted you dead. Do not forget that.

  
⚜

  
Oikawa Tooru has been alive for a long, long time. Not as long as the palace guards, by any means, but long enough. He was there before the queen died, and the king’s heart bled itself empty. He was there when Hiroto the Vanquisher was still a man with a crown and a weak disposition. He was there when they held the prince’s palms out before the youngest mage in the castle, who would soon become the deadest, and he cried as the language of the heavens was branded into his skin.

So Oikawa Tooru has, by extension, also seen a lot. The king never let him near those dark, hidden archives where they kept the body counts and the inventory of the royal treasury, so he broke into them instead. He saw the scrolls and the numbers, and he did the math. In fact, he might even say the math did itself. It was painfully obvious from the start. Like a bird shot out of the sky.

What was obvious, you ask? Congratulations. You are the first to ask; no one else has thought to do so. They are all clowns. If the young prince would get over his dislike of Tooru’s butterfly entourage, and simply open his mouth, then Tooru would give him all the answers. Tooru would give him the world on a silver platter, if that would cheer him up. But he is too busy staring at young, mean, gorgeous Miya Atsumu, who roams the castle at night and speaks with a gold coin under his tongue. Who sleeps like a ghost, his back to the wall, one eye always cracked open.

Never mind. Soon, June will arrive. Then they will all see what the king lied about. Though after all these years, Tooru admits he wishes the queen were still around to bear witness to this early spring dynasty. She would have liked to see her son come of age. She would have forgiven him, though he seems to have never forgiven himself. In spite of everything, or perhaps because of it, she would have forgiven him.

  
⚜

  
“What’s that?”

Hoshiumi tip-toes, trying to see the slip of paper in Atsumu’s hand. He tip-toes harder. Atsumu snorts and raises his arm higher. Hoshiumi steps on his foot.

“Asshole.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

Atsumu sighs dramatically. “It’s a request from the prince.”

Hoshiumi’s eyes go wider than they already are ninety percent of the time. He begins to resemble one of those barn owls that everyone knows is secretly cursed. Above them, the bell in the lookout tower chimes once, twice, thrice, signalling, well, whatever the hell. Atsumu does not know about this, or care for it. He only remembers the things that will keep him alive, like names, and places, and how to swing a sword with reckless abandon.

“Well then,” says Hoshiumi, who has forgotten about the matter of Atsumu’s obnoxious height. Now he is triumphant, like he is the one who has dodged a fist to the face. “You can’t refuse an order from the prince, can you?”

Atsumu laughs curiously.

“No. I suppose I can’t.”

  
⚜

  
One knock on his door means it’s Sakusa. Five to six knocks in quick succession means it’s Natsu, who has yet to learn the definition of self-restraint and is all the happier for it. Two fast knocks, followed by a single, measured knock, followed by two fast knocks means Miya Atsumu has finally emerged from whatever hole in the ground he spends all his time in, and has arrived in a pumpkin carriage on the night of the, uh. The Ball. The Event. Whatever this is.

Shouyou takes his time pulling the door open. “You’re late.”

Atsumu ducks his head in embarrassment. “I apologize.”

“Do you, now.”

“Yes. Sincerely.”

Shouyou shuts the door in his face, then opens it. Atsumu is still standing right where he was before, only he looks a little more tired and a little more nervous. His hair is slightly mussed, like he’s just come back from a jog or a training session. There are bags under his eyes.

“Do you ever sleep?” Shouyou asks as he steps past Atsumu, who moves aside immediately, into the corridor.

Atsumu peeks over the top of his head. Shouyou resists the urge to turn around and step on his foot. “Yes, why?”

The guards will be here soon. The castle’s surveillance network has been growing progressively more intrusive as they approach his twentieth birthday; now there are at least twice as many guards as he remembers seeing around. Or maybe thrice. Or maybe it’s all a trick of the light, and the king has hired more mages instead of immortal youths with big swords, in which case Shouyou is destined to fall miserably to his knees. Magic cannot beat stronger magic. Shouyou’s magic, hemmed in by ink and gloves and skin, is weak.

Shouyou shrugs. “You look tired.”

Atsumu smiles wryly. “Not as tired as you.”

He presses his palm flat to the wall and pushes. It’s the same old trick, the same old ritual of building and burning and hiding from unpleasantry, hiding from ugly things on the wall. He is careful not to make a sound as he steps into the passageway, Atsumu following close behind.

The hallway lights up again as he whispers the incantations his mother taught him, all those years ago, sitting across from him in the rose garden while he bit down on the strange sound of magic. No matter how many times he’s been down here, it always, always feels like he’s just won something. Like a prize, from a carnival. Or a second chance, from god.

“That’s rude,” Shouyou says, laughing. “Even if it’s true. It’s still rude.”

  
⚜

  
So it’s April. April means May, and May means the Spring Ball, and Shouyou has never dreaded anything more in his life, except for maybe the coming of age ceremony itself. In the meantime, the castle has been overrun by interior designers, concept artists, and enough palace guards to ensure that even Shouyou has trouble sneaking into the library in the morning. If only all the guards were like Futakuchi: grumpy and nice and criminally apathetic towards everything in the universe, other than Aone. Perhaps then, he would be able to breathe without feeling like someone was waiting for him to cough out a lung.

But life is never bearable when you are the crown prince of a crumbling kingdom and your name is Hinata Shouyou, and you are nineteen years old, because nineteen means twenty, and twenty means adulthood, and adulthood means they’re going to put a big ugly crown on your head, and tell you to sit down, and never get up again. Congratulations, you are the new king, he can imagine them saying, chaining his hands and his feet to the throne. Congratulations. The weight of this kingdom’s blood-spattered history is yours now. Please do as you wish with it, as long as you never hold it up to the light.

If Shouyou had a say in anything other than the color of the upholstery in his room, he would ask them all to sit in the library and read every book on its shelves. Then he would drag them back and he would grab them by the collar, one by one, and he would ask them why he’s so fucked up. He would ask them why he doesn’t remember being eight or nine or ten, why his memory looks like a fishing net that’s been torn apart by a pack of hippogriffs. Why his father won’t meet his eyes when he says ‘look at everything I did for you’.

“Maybe it’s your own fault?” they would probably suggest then, because no one in this castle has ever given a damn about him, when he’s not smiling and waving with his heart in his throat. Like oh, maybe you have been too ungrateful. Or maybe you have been too cruel, or maybe you have ruined too much. He can imagine all of these things, in everyone’s voices, even though they have never been anything but kind to him.

“Where are we going again?” Atsumu asks, watching as Shouyou leans back and away from the wall.

Shouyou points at the tunnel. “That way.”

“Thank you for your considerate answer.”

After several minutes, they step back out into the white-gold interior of the castle proper, Shouyou fingering the keys in his pocket, Atsumu touching his stupid pretty earring like a housecat playing with a stalk of grass. Once they reach the end of this hallway, the north tower will be in sight. Atsumu makes droll observations about the aesthetic choices of the north wing and stretches his arms over his head, yawning, while Shouyou thinks about astrophysics. Shouyou thinks about the one conversation he recalls having with his mother, before eight-nine-ten, but after the gloves had come on. He is still doing this, steeping with half his head in a dark pool of memory, when they hear footsteps, the bright clink of armor, the whisper of shadows flickering behind the flames. Murmuring. Voices growing louder.

“Oh. Oh shit. Oh SHIT.”

  
⚜

  
The one and only conversation Shouyou really remembers having with Hinata Fuyumi, the late queen of the kingdom of Solis:

Shouyou: am I scary?

Fuyumi: no, you’re not.

Shouyou: but father said my powers could kill someone. He said they’re evil.

Fuyumi: Your father is simply worried for you. He doesn’t want you to hurt anyone.

Shouyou: But what if I get hurt instead? What if I accidentally hurt me? Should I be scared of myself?

Fuyumi: Shouyou, you are the light of my life. You will never be anything but wonderful and kind in my eyes, and I am sorry for the rabbits and the hippogriffs that lost their lives, while we struggled to make sense of what was happening. But answer me this, dear son. Did you mean to hurt them?

Shouyou: no.

Fuyumi: then you must be sorry, and you must forgive yourself. You were not destined for destruction, no matter what the old hooty mages try to say. Your powers are a gift.

One day, you will meet someone who understands this. You will know it by the way they look at your hands, and the way they hold your heart against their chest. You will want to trust them, and they will let you.

When the time comes for them to leave, I hope that you will hold on, because people like that are hard to come by, even in a world like ours. Hold onto them, and hold onto your dream of touching the sun. You can do anything you set your mind to, Shouyou. Do you understand? You can do anything in the world. I believe in you.

  
⚜

  
“Someone’s coming.”

“Yeah, no shit—”

_“—Shh.”_

He clamps his hand over Atsumu’s mouth. Atsumu glares at him weakly but his heart is hammering like a house on fire. Or is it Shouyou’s? Shouyou has him pinned to the wall, chest to chest, hip to hip. Atsumu’s skin is burning and there’s a sultry, heady smell in the air. Shouyou is beginning to regret choosing the most efficient method to shut him up, but there are bigger things to worry about now. Like the palace guard advancing down the hallway beside them. Like the eyes of the court mages, prickling on his skin.

The sound of armor clinking gets louder as the guard approaches. Fifteen meters. Ten. Five. Shouyou’s heart thuds like a drum. He may not have a curfew, but he has a king for a father, and a father for a king. They are one and they are different. They will both want to know what he is doing.

“If we get caught here,” he says very, very softly, peering around the bend. “You got lost. I was helping you.”

Atsumu mumbles something in protest.

“Exactly what I had in mind.”

More mumbling.

“You can submit any complaints to my personal advisor in the morning.”

Then the guard is here: close enough to touch, close enough to grab by the neck and throttle. Shouyou’s never seen him before and Atsumu’s never had someone’s hand clamped over his mouth. All the guard has to do is turn his head slightly to the right, and he will see the kind of thing one expects to never see in their lifetime. A prince and his sword instructor, pressed up against a wall. Sneaking around after dark. Having a rendezvous.

How spicy, as in. How damning, as in, please don’t look over here. Please don’t do that. Please.

The guard does not turn his head. Shouyou releases Atsumu from his grasp and stumbles backwards, breathing hard.

Atsumu’s face is completely red. He turns away before Shouyou can notice, and squats down on the floor, not speaking, barely breathing. He runs his hands through his hair. He runs his hands through his hair again. There’s a sultry, heady smell in the air. Or is it all in his head?

When he straightens up again, the prince is watching him with the kind of look one might regale a pair of particularly nice-looking ducks in a pond with.

“Let’s agree not to do that again, okay?” he says, smiling.

This time, Atsumu does not dodge. Atsumu is carrying too much baggage now to step deftly out of the way, even if he knows the footwork. Even if he knows there’s no point in agonizing over the prince of a kingdom like this, because no matter how much you want to touch his teeth, which is a lot, enough to die for, enough to end dynasties for, this boy will leave you behind.

Atsumu knows what it is like to be left behind. He knows what solitude looks like. But he does not dodge. Still. He does not dodge.

  
⚜

  
Shouyou tells him to close his eyes.

He didn’t grow up lonely. He was the kind of infant that screamed when you picked him up, and then peed all over the front of your shirt. He was the kind of toddler that could be found trying to turn a set of bedsheets into a parachute. These small atrocities delighted his mother, and horrified his father, while throughout the years the cooks and chambermaids continued to celebrate the way Shouyou seemed immune to the cruelties of life itself.

But what the hell is a friend? Look me in the eye, Shouyou: when you grow up you will meet people you will want to burn down cities for. Those are the ones you will want to hold onto.

So he tells Atsumu to close his eyes. Atsumu is skeptical. He stares at him like he thinks Shouyou is going to throw him out a window or make him grow a third leg, but he obliges. Shouyou unlocks the door.

Then it’s a long, meandering climb up a tall flight of stairs. Their footsteps spiral tighter and tighter in on themselves as they get closer to the room at the top of the north tower. The door gives with a hard push. Shouyou tugs him through the doorway. Shouyou asks him to open his eyes, and Atsumu still thinks he is going to throw him out the window, but perhaps it would not be so bad if it were him. He does not say this. He does not say any of the things on his mind.

Then he opens his eyes, and for all of a moment, he forgets what it means to be half of a person, and half of a life. To be half of a pair of twins, in a castle miles from home, looking for a way to let the old ghost go.

  
⚜

  
Fuyumi was twenty-three when she released a species of endangered, immortal pigeons into the castle, although if you want to argue semantics, then she was not the one who made them stay. Instead she waved a fan around like a sword, and was like ‘if you want to leave this kingdom behind and never see my face again, go for it’.

As we all know, the pigeons did not go for it. The pigeons grew attached to the red and gold monstrosity that Fuyumi called home. They were like ‘I want to see your face forever. I like it’.

The problem with this arrangement was that the immortal pigeons were immortal, while Fuyumi was not. In fact, several years after the pigeons had taken over all the rafter space in the castle, Fuyumi died giving birth to the princess, while Oikawa Tooru was sojourning towards the eastern hills on a flying carpet he had borrowed from the treasury. The princess was named Natsu. As in summer. As in your mother gave her life to keep your flame burning.

This made the pigeons very sad. They were immortal, after all. Death was not something that computed into their understanding of the universe, and it confused them. It was strange, and unpleasant, and now their favorite person was gone.

But like your grandparents, whose habits remain in the upholstery in the lounge, and the kitchen’s preference for asparagus over other vegetables, she had left the north tower behind. It will be a gift, she said, smiling hard enough to break ice. For my children. For the pigeons.

And so, to this day, for every pigeon born in the castle, another springs to life in the north tower. But the birds in the north tower do not look like the birds that inhabit the rafters in the great hall, or below the stained-glass of the baths. They do not chirp loudly or sing off-key melodies in the early morning, which break into the sleeping quarters of the castle and leave its inhabitants helplessly annoyed and enamored. They do not leave for days at a time, and then come back home to roost.

The birds in the north tower are made entirely of light. Blue light. Light the color of the ocean at dawn, when the sun has reached down to trail her fingers through the water, and everything is tender like a dream. Light that spirals upwards into the high, domed ceiling, and then falls in a shower of sparks upon their shoulders.

  
⚜

  
“This is insane.”

“It is.”

“No, seriously, you have no idea, this is,” Atsumu turns towards him, leaning in so close, Shouyou’s vision begins to blur. His brow is pinched and his expression is tight, like he can’t decide if he’s supposed to run from the reckoning, or fight it. “Why are you showing me all this?”

Shouyou looks at him blankly.

“Why can’t I?”

Above their heads, there is no end to the motion of light and color. Silver branches extend from the walls and the ceiling, and the birds move from branch to branch, not stopping to think or to breathe. The blue of the sea moves across Atsumu’s cheekbones, his nose, the cleft of his lip. It stops in his eyes.

“Your highness,” he says, deflating. He lets go of Shouyou and something falls out from under the collar of his shirt. “I don’t understand.” He looks up with mild puzzlement, as if he thinks he is dreaming.

Shouyou shrugs. “There’s nothing to understand.”

This is a blatant lie. For every ounce of confusion Atsumu is feeling right now, Shouyou is feeling an avalanche’s equivalent of fear. For every burst of panic Shouyou has about sharing the room his mother dragged down from the heavens with the boy they dragged out of a hole in the ground, Atsumu is feeling ten times the guilt. They are both like this. Guilt and forgiveness and guilt. There is a shoe in one hand, and another hanging from the ceiling. Neither knows when it will fall. Both of them are looking.

But let it be known, regardless of the broader state of affairs in this kingdom, which are falling apart in the moment even as everything comes together, that Shouyou has never seen a boy like this. Who looks at the ceiling like it is a staircase to the sky, his head tilted back to the cosmos. Who looks soft enough to put your hands on, to take home, to bite.

Atsumu lowers his gaze in time to see the silver locket around Shouyou’s neck. It has fallen out of his shirt and is now hanging down over all the layers of his uniform, all the layers of a prince’s armor. There is a fox-face engraved on its front. He thinks, for a moment, that it looks familiar. That he has seen something like it, back in the heart of December, however many lifetimes away.

Then Shouyou is rising up on his toes and whispering something into his ear. Then Shouyou is saying, more loudly now, “I always wanted to touch your stupid jade earring. Why’s it jade? What does it do?”

Atsumu doesn’t have the time to pull back. Shouyou’s hands are on his shoulders, his breath on his neck. “It doesn’t do anything,” says Atsumu, feeling for a moment like he may topple into the wall.

“Lies.”

“I don’t lie, your highness.”

Shouyou noses at the side of his neck. He is not drunk. He cannot get drunk. This is not a statistical impossibility; it is a truth of the world, like how things dropped from a height may break, and ruined castles, unlike ruined children, can be saved. But he is sleepy. Oh, he is so sleepy. And this boy looks nice in this blue light, like something you could roll up and tuck under one arm, like a pillow for sleeping on. The light is blue, but his cheeks are pink. The light is blue. But he’s spring.

Shouyou gives the thought in his head about five seconds of serious and earnest consideration, which is, he thinks, enough. Then he leans in even closer towards Atsumu, who is sputtering loudly now, angst forgotten. He nips at the side of his earlobe, where the metal hook of his earring does not obstruct the skin. He does not know why he does this. He does not know what it means to want someone so much you want to cut them up and then put them back together again.

But oh, this boy is so nice and terrible and annoying. He is unbearable. Shouyou has given him something without expecting anything in return, and yet Atsumu has gone against all odds and returned him one more shred of honesty. One more shred of truth. If he gives Shouyou any more, who knows what will happen? Perhaps he will end up caring about him, and then the boy will die, and everything will be terrible. Can he want this? Can he believe it?

The birds in the rafters fly faster and faster, the circle tightening in on itself until the ceiling becomes a flickering mass of light. The crown prince of Solis backs away very quickly, his face red, his hands coming up to hide the redness. But it is already too late. The damage has been done.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [delicate](https://open.spotify.com/track/6NFyWDv5CjfwuzoCkw47Xf?si=flMwKYvfSOC-sFFCPXwA3g)

They say you become your parents when you grow up. The children of fighters become stronger fighters. The children of politicians become crueller politicians. The children of kings become greater kings, which is to say more ambitious ones, which is to say more selfish people.

If there is one thing Shouyou can believe about his father, it is that he loved his wife, in that strange way that some people come to love their houseplants that keep on trying to die, or their favorite bedtime story. He loved his wife like hell. He loved her more than hell itself. He loved her more than he loved his own life, and the life of this kingdom, and therefore, by extension, of his son.

Of course, Shouyou cannot confirm this. There is no book in the great library in which the text ‘does your father love you?’ ‘yes/no’ can be found, just like how the book detailing whatever traumatic experiences he had as a child will never be touched by his hands. He has suspected foul play from the beginning. All the same, it is tiring.

Being the son of this man is tiring. Why did he do so much, why is he still smiling? And why is he so soft now; why does he try, awkwardly, to sit across from his son at the vacant table? If he has an agenda, Shouyou has already ended it. Shouyou has seen a thousand things end at those hands.

When his wife died, the king did not sleep for eight days and eight nights. They had to walk him out of the room of mourning. They had to pick him off the chair. Oikawa and Sakusa hooked an arm under each armpit and dragged him out of that cold, quiet room, and the whole time, the king wouldn’t stop looking over his shoulder.

Shouyou does not want to become this. He does not want to become the three years of death, or the one left behind while his beloved passes on through the clouds. He does not want to become the boy at the Ball, who sees someone so beautiful he decides to take them home. His home is empty, anyway. Vacant, like that room of mourning. Like a dream.

  
⚜

  
This dream again. He is small and light and fast, and he is running through the courtyard of the castle. On the other side of the courtyard, near the doors that lead to the north wing, his mother stands in a lovely corseted dress. She is talking to somebody he cannot see.

As he approaches his mother, he opens his mouth to announce his arrival. He loves hugging her around the waist, burying his face in the soft folds of her skirt. His mother has told him, time and time again, that a prince should not behave like this; he is growing too old for such play, he should know better. All the same, she allows it.

She allows herself a glance in his direction as he barrels past the trees with their tall, crooked shadows and the sun’s angry rays and he smiles, he begins to laugh. But no sound comes out. He tries to call her name. The courtyard is perfectly quiet. Not even the sound of the wind reaches his ears; not even the sound of the air itself, moving around them. He would know this, being the prince of a small kingdom. He has been taught to read the sounds of the sky.

The person his mother is talking to steps out of the shadows. They are small, almost his height, and wearing a big black cloak. He cannot make out a face underneath the hood. He wonders if they have one at all. He decides to take his mother away from this person who is standing beside her, half-obscured by a pillar, half-obscured by a light which, otherwise, illuminates the rest of this dream with clarity. But he cannot seem to get closer. He keeps running. His mother keeps talking. The cloaked figure moves towards the edge of her pretty red dress, the hem of her corset.

The hooded figure holds out their hands, and presses them to his mother’s shoulders.

He blinks. He blinks again. Nothing happens.

He blinks again, and the castle is on fire. Suddenly the hooded figure is in front of him, not his mother, and his mother is not near the door but lying in the center of the courtyard. She is a body on the floor. There are several bodies on the floor. The floor is full of bodies, none of them moving, all of them charred.

The hooded figure is gesturing, wildly, their hands drawing arcs through the air, and he notices how bloody their palms are, how little skin he can make out. How many have they killed, he wonders in a daze. How much blood has been spilled at their hands?

Then he himself is burning, too, and the figure is yelling something in a voice he swears he knows, and as the cruel red sun fades to white above the burning courtyard, all of it burning, his skin burning like a thing caught on fire, everything falls away.

  
⚜

  
“How did you get so good with a sword, anyway?”

It is April again. The hour is late, the afternoon inching lazily across the courtyard. Their swords clash. Shouyou presses forward, not wanting to be the one to back off.

Atsumu pushes back with equal strength. “Is this a distraction tactic, your highness?”

Shouyou clicks his tongue in disappointment. “You know I am not that kind of person.”

“Hmm. Do I?”

He ducks to one side with a quick, clean motion, and Atsumu stumbles forward. For a moment he thinks he’s done it, but Atsumu braces himself with a lunge and then comes back up just as smoothly. Several more blows are exchanged, several loud clangs of metal ringing like glass through the air. The session ends with Shouyou on the ground. Again.

He drags himself to his feet, and sits down under the shade of the sakura.

“But really,” he says, continuing the half-conversation from earlier, as Atsumu hands him a flask. “How are you so good at this?”

Atsumu is still standing in the light. Water trickles down his chin as he tilts his leather flask to his lips. Even this image of him, all wet and rugged, wearing the same black button-up with the rolled-up sleeves, is alarming. He does not carry himself with the modesty usually accorded to those of his rank. He carries himself with grace. If Shouyou squints hard enough, he can almost see the regalia of a prince on him; the gold epaulettes, the white tunic. He shakes his head.

Atsumu looks back at him, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. For a moment it’s like the sun’s in Shouyou’s eyes again.

“The trick,” Atsumu says, “is self-defense.”

The courtyard continues to thrum with conversation and laughter, but as he walks over and sits in the shade beside Shouyou, Shouyou’s world narrows down to a point.

“When someone wants you dead,” Atsumu continues, blowing the hair out of his eyes. “You want to make the first move. But if you can’t make the first move, then you want to make the second one, and you want it to be good. And in a way, the second move puts you at an advantage, you see, because once they’ve hurt you, then everything you do after that is in self-defense. You can burn a house down in self-defense. You can kill a man in self-defense.”

Shouyou frowns at him. “Why, have you killed a man?”

Atsumu reaches out and plucks a petal from his hair. “Only in self-defense.”

“Does the king know this?”

He shrugs.

“The world’s not as nice as you think it is, your highness.” He gathers a pile of petals on the stone tiles between them, sweeping them together with the flats of his palms. “Not everyone grows up with a silver spoon in their mouth.”

The sakura petals are white, with pink veins. Some of them tinged with red, most of them pale and washed-out. Atsumu cups them in his hands like he’s drinking water from a stream, and lifts them to Shouyou’s face.

“Alternatively,” he says, blowing them in Shouyou’s direction. Shouyou squawks, batting the petals awa. Atsumu laughs in response, the sound high-pitched and breathy.

“Alternatively?” Shouyou glares at him. He can taste sakura in his mouth.

Atsumu stops laughing. He leans back on his hands, a sliver of air trapped between his teeth.

“Alternatively, you may be born into prosperity, and then have that prosperity ripped away from you in a horrible freak accident, by a god who has grown bored of all the peace and good in the world. Who just wants to see something burn.”

  
⚜

  
He sleeps through his morning routine these days. The chambermaids wake him up by tip-toeing into his room and throwing the windows open with violent cheer, or Sakusa sends his vipers. Either way, Shouyou feigns death for as long as he can. Shouyou is trying to get some serious, well-needed rest. He drags the covers back over his head and groans, loudly enough for whoever is in his room to hear, mumbles something about a stomach ache or the beginnings of a fever. They ignore him.

In place of his old morning routine, he now has a monstrosity of a morning schedule, which seamlessly and effectively transitions into a monstrosity of an afternoon schedule. Then he has five minutes to sleep, if he wishes to, or to be productive and get a headstart on tomorrow’s agenda. When his five minutes are over, he has a monstrosity of an evening schedule. It spits him out after ten on a good day, after eleven if he’s been held up by a ballroom designer in a gaudy peacock hat or another one of Oikawa’s evil underlings. Someone draws him a bath. Someone perfumes his hair. He falls asleep in the tub.

Rinse and repeat. Rise and shine. Shouyou scrubs his hand down his face and blinks; his hair is growing out again, he will have to cut it. A castle attendant, not Sakusa, hands him a piece of parchment. Sakusa is too busy with his own schedule from hell to bring him his vipers much these days. It is the only thing now in his life that sparks joy.

“When do you need this by?” he asks around a yawn, smothering it with the back of his hand.

“The end of the hour, your highness.”

He sits down soberly, and resists the urge to put his head on the table. An inkwell has been prepared for him, and if he spills that across another irreplaceable document for the Ball, there will be hell to pay. Sakusa has yet to forgive him for pawning off his royal jewel, even though he did, after all, have several replacements on hand.

It’s not even a particularly charming jewel, Shouyou thinks bitterly, dipping his quill in the inkwell with Misery and Despair. He skims the contents of the page with one eye while the other he keeps on the window beside him, from which the courtyard can be seen. It’s another version of the guest list. Another prediction for the future.

The attendant is still watching him from the doorway, so Shouyou thanks him pleasantly for his time and sends him off to fetch apples or milk or Kageyama, who he knows is wandering around somewhere in the castle, being useless and having the time of his life. Shouyou presses his elbows into the desk and sighs, then adds another name to the bottom of the list.

  
⚜

  
The Spring Ball is a festive occasion if you are between the ages of seventeen and five-hundred-and-three and your main goal in life is to marry into the royal family. It is also a festive occasion if you are above the age of five-hundred-and-three, but your name is Oikawa Tooru, because said name grants you immunity from what essentially amounts to the only rule protecting the royal family’s name from utter devastation. Conversely, if your name is Hinata Shouyou and you are not interested, presently and for the indeterminate future, in the sacred union of two persons in love, the Spring Ball is an occasion for murder. Multiple murders. Up to and including the personage of Oikawa Tooru.

“You will have to pick someone eventually, you know.”

Shouyou doesn’t even glance in his direction. He is busy staring at a selection of wines, whose names and colors he has never seen before in his life. Beside him, a member of the Ball’s executive committee is twiddling her fingers with what looks like annoyance or genuine excitement. He cannot tell.

“Yes,” Shouyou says, picking up a bottle. The executive committee member launches into a choreographed speech about its origin, age, and taste, which Shouyou ignores. “But eventually doesn’t mean now.”

Oikawa grins at him cattishly. “Why, are you conflicted?”

“What would I be conflicted about?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” He is leaning against the doorway in his usual white toga, shimmering with enough gold trim to buy out a small country with. His entourage of gaudy silver butterflies, having gotten bored of hanging around in the damp darkness of the stairwell, has invaded the wine cellar. One of them does a little dance in front of Shouyou’s face, obscuring the label on the bottle. Out of the corner of his eye, Oikawa waves a shimmering, gauntleted hand through the air, the gem on his ring shining like a light.

“Perhaps you have someone on your mind?”

Shouyou replaces the bottle on the shelf. The executive committee member begins to twitter excitedly, having taken his silence as a sign of approval, while somewhere inside of Hinata Shouyou’s chest, something begins to complain. Like a ball bouncing around within the confines of a small room, it ricochets off his rib cage and bludgeons his heart and lungs, caterwauling about something like honesty. Oikawa is messing with him. He can ignore him. He should.

“Oikawa,” he says, and Oikawa jumps at the mention of his name. He turns to face Solis’s oldest, strangest, and most powerful mage in full, his hands still full of scrolls and other bits of paraphernalia.

“Yes?”

“What is friendship to you?”

Oikawa shrugs, like he isn’t the answer to the universe.

“Whatever it is, your highness, I assure you it is not what you have in mind.”

  
⚜

  
At first they want him to choose the color of the lighting in the ballroom, so he humors them and follows one of their committee members inside. Then said committee member spends an hour and a half explaining the merits of different shades of magical fire, and he ends up late for his next meeting, and when he tells them he’d like something nice and nondescript they smile and nod and say, “we understand. Everything will be gold.” Then they want him to choose the curtains. Then they want him to decide on the hors d'oeuvres. Then they want him to sample fifteen different hors d'oeuvres, freshly prepared from the royal kitchen, who has not had the time to bake spiced cookies for Natsu since April.

He’s hiding from the interior design team in the stables, eating an apple he stole from the hippogriff supply station, when it finally occurs to him how ridiculous it is that his own suitor’s ball is being micromanaged by a group of people whose names he doesn’t know. It feels like he hasn’t seen the sun in three weeks, and it is true that he hasn’t seen the sun in three weeks, but all his limbs feel heavy like they’ve been deprived of it. It hasn’t stopped raining since May began. Soon, the moat surrounding the castle will overflow with moss and koi fish, and Oikawa will be forced to send some of his people down. Shouyou takes minor delight in this. Oikawa abhors expending manpower on structural defects.

“Your highness, that is my hippogriff’s apple.” Hoshiumi appears in the narrow hallway like a ghost with a height complex that must announce their presence by popping up in unexpected locations. He is drenched. Outside the rain is falling in diagonal sheets across the courtyard. Lighting strikes every few minutes. Thunder follows like a feeling.

Shouyou takes another bite. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Hoshiumi grabs another apple from the hippogriff supply station. Hippogriff number one eyes him with a mixture of disappointment and betrayal. He sniffs it.

Shouyou pushes his hair out of his face. The rain is getting in through the windows. If Sakusa were free he would scold him for letting himself be exposed to the elements, but at this point Shouyou will take any excuse to be knocked out cold. He doesn’t want the Spring Ball to happen to begin with. He is a victim in an outdated system of matchmaking, designed to grant power and prestige and detract from the total sum of happiness in a nation, which is already lacking. He is running on a deficit of luck; Solis is running on a deficit of everything.

Hoshiumi spins the apple in his hand, and sniffs the other side with an equal amount of suspicion. “Haven’t seen you with the Atsumu guy recently,” he comments.

“Um.” Shouyou’s ears begin to burn. “Lessons have been cancelled for the time being. Because of preparations for the Ball.”

“So you haven’t gone to find him?”

Shouyou chews his apple, staring at his shoes. The floor of the stable is littered with bits of straw and manure, which he kicks at with the toe of his boot. “I’ve been thinking about him,” he says defensively.

Hoshiumi runs a hand through hippogriff number one’s feathers. Hippogriff number one responds positively, making a sound at the back of its throat which sounds somewhat amicable. He offers it the rest of his apple.

Then he bends over until he’s face to face with Shouyou, who is still sitting miserably against one side of the stable. The rain is loud enough to drown in but Hoshiumi’s amusement is louder, as is every aspect of his general being. There is a reason they always send him off on long, high-risk missions with low return rates. If god were to arrive on his front doorstep, he would probably try to arm-wrestle him. For fun.

“I didn’t know you thought about people,” declares Hoshiumi Kourai, who does everything for fun or to prove something to god, who he wants to arm-wrestle. “That’s really cool of you, your highness.”

Shouyou frowns. “Thank you?”

Hippogriff number one neighs. It wants another apple and a new name.

“It’s not a compliment. The Atsumu guy sends his regards. He also sends his frustration about having not seen your face in what feels like years, and some embarrassment which I have interpreted based on his expression, and a sonnet about the color of your eyes.”

“You’re kidding.”

Hoshiumi takes another apple. He eats its core. “Perhaps I am, perhaps I’m not. Only one way to find out.”

  
⚜

  
But they want him to decide on the design for the guest invites, and the flowers lining the hallways, and the musicians who will be playing, live, for the entire night, and they want him to sign documents and treatises and other miscellaneous items, and Miya Atsumu is either sulking or planning an elaborate scheme that will end in the destruction of the castle proper, because Shouyou can’t find him anywhere. He catches glimpses of red turning the corner of a hallway, or the flash of a jade earring from across the courtyard. He hears laughter that sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of the ocean. He keeps adding the same name to the revised and re-revised and re-re-revised guest list for the Spring Ball, and it keeps getting taken out by the same person. Is it the king? Is it Sakusa? Is it god?

The Spring Ball will take place exactly one month before his coming of age ceremony. At a glance it seems like it will never happen at all, not with the way the rain leaves the court mages on a crude, twenty-four-hour rotation to ensure the castle does not drown in its sleep. But slowly, the weeks begin to add up. He gets away for an afternoon, and finds Lisa in her glowing workshop under the moat. He asks for a favor.

Lisa claps her hands together in unrestrained delight. “Oho? How grand is grand?”

“As grand as any of mine,” Shouyou replies cryptically. “Let him be the crown prince for the night.”

“How much gold trim am I allowed to use?”

“Mmm. All of it.”

Meanwhile, on the other side of the castle, Miya Atsumu is walking down the same dark, dusty hallway for the thousandth time. He does not speak the language of magic. No matter how hard he tries, the glyphs on the walls will not respond to him, and so in his bitterness he has brought a candle. He clamps the candle holder between his teeth while he works another trap door open. It is one he has seen before, once on a clear March afternoon, before his mechanical heart was roused from its slumber and dropped off the side of a cliff. It is the one he fell through while chasing the prince through this secret space. The rest, as they say, was history, but this is the part they never tell you. History that has been resurfaced from old earth is as good as a foretelling of the future. And Miya Atsumu, well. Miya Atsumu knows a lot about the future.

  
⚜

  
Tooru approaches him from a distance. He does this, first of all, because Oikawa Tooru approaches everyone from a distance, so as to get a better gauge of their idiosyncrasies before he has to deal with them upfront. But he also does it because Miya Atsumu looks a little funny, as if he has just seen the face of a godless creature. He is standing in the middle of a hallway in the east wing. Outside, it is still raining, though they have grown used to its footsteps by now. Tooru’s mages have not slept in several days.

Atsumu’s expression closes up the moment he sees him. This happens at the thirty-meter mark, which Tooru thinks is rather impressive. Atsumu folds his arms across his chest and leans against the wall, his features calm, his pose relaxed.

“Good evening.” He nods.

Tooru smiles back with glitter in his teeth. “Good evening to you as well.” He adjusts a strand of hair that has fallen out of place, and the magic around him shimmers to accommodate this. “Where is your prince?”

“It’s none of my business where the prince is.”

“Oh? But are you not one of the prince’s people?”

Atsumu shrugs. “In name.”

“In practice?”

“In practice,” Atsumu echoes, fingering his earring absently. It is not a particularly interesting earring. Tooru’s are much more exciting; sometimes he surprises himself with the spells he is capable of. Which version of him cast this, how was he feeling? Was he earnestly trying to kill someone, or was someone trying to kill him instead? Most likely, the answer to the above is yes. Yes to all of them. Yes to death.

Atsumu’s earring does not have any magic. It is jade, teardrop-shaped, and gorgeous. But so is the rest of him, and Oikawa does not trust that. He does not trust this person.

Atsumu shakes his head, more to himself than Tooru. “Never mind.” He unfolds his arms and shoves his hands in his pockets. “Well. My turn to ask a question.”

Tooru is mildly taken aback. It takes a lot to ask Oikawa Tooru a question. If you are not Hinata Shouyou, then you are mad.

Tooru tilts his chin up. He waits for him to speak.

Atsumu, the bastard with his bastard sword, takes his time finding his words. He seems to be building up to something in his head that is monumental or perhaps slightly terrifying. He does not look like he wants to be here, here being anywhere in this castle or its surrounding cities, and yet he has not fled. How strange, Tooru thinks with interest. What a strange man the old king has let into the castle. He is see-through, like a one-way mirror. On the other side is something incorrigible.

Tooru is about to turn on his heel and glide back down the hallway to his hideout in the south tower, several hundred feet above the clouds, when the bastard speaks up.

“What,” he says, stops, toes the ground with his boot. “What is the prince afraid of?”

Tooru resists the urge to set something alight to add to the drama of the moment. Despite all his claims otherwise, despite his feverish denial of his human soul, it seems Miya Atsumu is as trapped by the workings of his human heart as the rest of them. Akaashi and Bokuto will have to hear about this.

“Well, well, well. Where do I even start?”

Atsumu regards him with suspicion. “At the beginning?”

Tooru flips his hair attractively. “Wrong. We will begin at the end.”

  
⚜

  
By the time Shouyou was five, everyone in the castle was afraid of him. Their fears varied by degree and description. Some of the librarians refused to so much as walk into the same room as him. Most of the chambermaids were merely concerned as one might worry about a rabid horse. The royal cooks were, on the whole, relatively unbothered, and only thought to consider the risk of leaving out biscuits for the young prince when prompted to do so by friends who did not live in the royal kitchen. They concluded that it wasn’t a very large risk. They only had to speak to him for a moment. Anyway, what could the little prince do that their sentient and overambitious ovens hadn’t already tried? He had no reason to burn the kitchen down, when the kitchen was where the biscuits were.

Regardless of their stance on self-defense, they had all heard about the incident. The king had turned it into a mandatory reading for all the staff, after all, as if his son’s legacy would not be his achievements when he inherited the throne, but this. A dead man from a faraway kingdom. A funeral held in a vacant room.

The cooks were correct to argue that the prince did not know what he was doing. The young prince was bright and kind and clueless. He did many things which were inexplicable to the adults around him and yet made perfect sense in his own eyes. He built warships out of large tree-leaves. He built altars for the dead insects he found in his room. But he had not killed the traveler on purpose, even if he was the one who raised his hands, palms out, and singed the leather of his lungs.

His father had the memory removed, as one might remove an arm with magic or reattach it. His mother objected at first, asserting that the hole it would leave in his head would cause problems for him in the future. The court mages lent their support; altering a person’s memory meant altering the composition of their soul. If handled incorrectly, or resurfaced through forceful means later on in their life, it could lead to devastating results.

But Hiroto insisted. Hiroto had seen the traveler reach for his son’s neck. It was his fault that he had been too slow to react, and that he had, for a moment, hesitated to save that small life. In the absence of higher interference, his son had done what any self-preserving creature would do. He did not deserve to remember this; none of them did.

Hours after they sent the man off to an unmarked grave, Oikawa Tooru cracked Shouyou’s head open and fished the memory of blood and fire out of its soft interior. He had been reluctant to do so at first. But the queen had explained the circumstances as best as she could, her voice tight with urgency, and Oikawa had always been weak to her soft human tendencies. So rarely did she display them. For most of her life she had lived like a warhorse with no war, fashioning the castle into something made of steel and glitter.

Later, another mage was called in. This mage was young, nervous, and did not adjust to the bright splendor of the king’s quarters the way Oikawa had before. But it was precisely because he was young, nervous, and scared to death of the king and his bone-dry eyes, that he had been selected. None of the court mages were disposable. But he was the closest thing to it.

Later, Oikawa Tooru stood back and bore witness to the process of burning, and branding, and crying, and felt within himself a twisted sense of nostalgia. He felt sympathy. His own hands, hidden in the folds of his cloak, tingled with growing pains whenever the light seared too sharply across the prince’s palms, while beside him the king looked on expressionlessly. This was not an experience Tooru had hoped to have again, even if by proxy. He was, for the first time in a few decades, upset.

Later, the king knelt before the boy he had raised into an angel, pressing a pair of black gloves into his hands. He said _I’m sorry,_ and did not mean it. He said _you are dangerous._ He said _the sun is not meant for human hands, and your hands are not human to begin with, so do not reach for it. You will go on, and people will forget. But you mustn’t. Remember what you are capable of. Remember that you are a child of death._

The incident with the traveler was never mentioned again. But it was recorded down in the archives in the darkest part of the library, and one ordinary day, in the summer of his fifteenth year, Hinata Shouyou stumbled across it. He knelt on the floor, the pages spread before him, reading about the things his parents had hidden from him. He knelt on the floor, realizing. He knelt for mercy.

So the story began to unravel, bit by bit, revealing the cold, eyeless Medusa that had been sitting in the room all along.

  
⚜

  
Exactly a week before the Spring Ball, it stops raining, so Shouyou escapes to the garden. His mother’s roses are not in bloom today, but the air is sweet-smelling, and pleasant, and drowns out his temporary demons. Sakusa is probably off spending some personal time with his vipers. Natsu, he has been told, is having her gown fitted today. Shouyou kneels beside a rosebush, cheerfully disregarding the stain he knows the dirt will leave on his pants. Today he is a man of no inhibitions. He is a man of indulgence.

But perhaps Miya Atsumu had met a godless creature in the east wing after all. Perhaps he had cursed them all, when he asked Oikawa Tooru the question no one else had dared to ask, and pissed on the heavens, because as Shouyou runs his fingers along the stem of a rose, the sky yawns broadly, and rain spills forth like an ocean.

He stands up, still holding the rose he has broken off at the stem, not realizing he has done so. Oh, the woes of being a prince. He shields his face from the worst of the onslaught, and makes a run for it.

  
⚜

  
Shouyou squints through the soggy mess of his bangs at the person standing in front of him, and patiently waits for the apparition to dissipate.

This must be a trick of the light. He is tired, after all. And wet. And his socks are making a horrible sound in his boots as he climbs onto the raised platform, water dripping into his eyes, sliding down the collar of his shirt. He has not accidentally bumped into Miya Atsumu after spending close to a month trying, pointlessly, to locate him, while at the back of his mind a tiny voice whispered about how you aren’t supposed to bite people’s ears, no matter how caught up in the moment you are. What was he caught up in anyway? What was he thinking? He digs around in his head for an answer, and comes up with nothing.

In the meantime, what has Atsumu been doing? What has he been spending his days on, if not agony and confusion and other brands of magic? Is he haunted by birds, or the boy? Or both?

Atsumu, who is supposed to be haunted, holds up his hands in a gesture of peace. “Well, um,” he says, sitting down, his hands still in the air. “What are you doing here, your highness?”

Shouyou stares at him. “Taking shelter from the rain.”

“Ah, yes.” Atsumu crosses one leg over the other and sighs heavily, like he’s just been told his house has burned down in a fire. The bench is wet and under constant assault from the rain, but then and again, so is he. His uniform is soaked, the red fabric of his coat clinging to his skin. The bags under his eyes haven’t gotten any better, though they haven’t gotten any worse.

“So,” he says. He pats the space beside him. “Are you going to sit down?”

Shouyou almost pouts at him, though he does not realize he does this, and Atsumu chooses not to inform him of the fact. Shouyou is experiencing a complex mix of emotions right now, ranging from extreme disappointment and annoyance to a kind of giddy tingling in his hands. Atsumu pushes his hair out of his eyes for the third time in as many minutes. Shouyou experiences a minor breathing problem.

He sits down. There is little else for him to do, and the rain does not look like it will let up soon; the evil executive committee knows he is here, but he hopes they do not come for him. Shouyou would rather sit and stew in his cold, sticky clothes for the rest of the hour than be dragged back to paperwork hell. He would rather sit in this cold, sickly gazebo with this boy.

So he sucks it up. He sucks everything up. He does not know what it means to think about someone so much, the interior of your skull becomes a monument to their existence, though he is already doing this, and has been doing so for a while, so he sucks it up. He says, “I am sorry about doing that,” and, “I have something for you,” and then realizes he has not brought the gift or the proper apology. He prepares to run.

“It’s fine,” Atsumu interrupts quickly.

Shouyou contemplates god in his heaven. God is laughing at him. “Is it?”

Atsumu uncrosses his leg. He crosses the other one. He seems to decide that this is altogether too much effort, and puts both of his legs down, staring off into the downpour.

What is Miya Atsumu? No one seems to have an answer, though no one seems particularly bothered about the lack of one either. Shouyou studies his profile like he is trying to paint it. Here, the bridge of the nose, perfected. Here, the bow of the mouth. Here, the revelation that some people can be born with faces meant for looking at. From afar. From up close. From. Well. You know.

“You know,” Shouyou says suddenly, twirling the soggy rose between his fingers, like a charm for warding off bad luck. “The Spring Ball is in a week.”

He turns at the sound of Shouyou’s voice, rainwater clinging to his skin.

“I know,” he says, like he doesn’t have a stake in this stupid, messy thing, like he hasn’t been made privy to more than was written in his job description. Shouyou leans forward.

“Atsumu, will you not—”

“—Well!” Atsumu stands up. He dusts off the front of his coat purposelessly. He begins to walk jauntily towards the exit, swinging his arms like a marionette.

Shouyou stands up just as quickly. “Where are you going?”

“Back. Unlike you, your highness, I’ve got things to do in the castle.”

“Bullshit. You teach me how to swing a sword. What else is there?”

Atsumu walks backwards into the railing. Shouyou presses his hand to the pillar beside him. Now he cannot escape no matter how much the temptation arises, not unless he commits a minor felony, or he pushes the prince away.

“Ah,” Atsumu sighs helplessly. “I’m cornered.”

Outside the gazebo, the rain continues to fall. In various rooms and hallways around the castle its inhabitants gather in groups of two, three, seven to whisper their predictions for the Ball. Who will the prince select? Who will rise to the golden mantle?

In the rose garden full of blue water, Shouyou shivers. He has not been this close to Atsumu in weeks. He has forgotten what proximity feels like, how it short circuits the brain and leaves the chest burning. Perhaps the cold is finally getting to him. Spring showers can be unforgiving.

“Why are you avoiding me?” he asks.

Atsumu turns his face to the side, looking off into a cool gray world of illusion. His Adam’s apple bobs, the line of his jaw tightening, as he makes an expression Shouyou doesn’t know how to describe. No amount of formal schooling at the hands of Sakusa Kiyoomi could have prepared him for what it takes to crack a boy like Miya Atsumu open. To look Pinocchio in the eyes and tell him: I am confident of your humanity. There. I see it right there. Shouyou cannot describe the look on his face, but he thinks he wants it. This, then, he knows.

  
⚜

  
“I’m not avoiding you. You’re just busy.”

The stone pillar is cold. Even through his gloves, Shouyou’s palms are stinging.

“I am busy,” he allows. “But I’ve been busy before.”

Atsumu shifts uncomfortably. He does not seem to have taken well to being pinned in place, and is holding onto the railing behind him like a lifeline. He runs a hand through his hair, again without purpose. It’s all wet anyway, either plastered to his forehead or pushed back into a rat’s nest of tangles. As he does this, the cuff of his sleeve is pulled back, revealing a sliver of pale wrist.

“Not like this you haven’t,” he says, and this time his voice is defensive. It’s accusatory, like a child whose toy has been taken away or a puppy whose owner forgot to let them out into the yard last night. “Every time I looked in your direction you were talking to some stranger with a fancy hat or Sakusa or, god forbid, Oikawa Tooru, so I,” he covers his mouth with the back of his hand, as if embarrassed. “I figured if you didn’t want me around, I’d make sure I wasn’t around.”

For a moment, neither of them speaks. There’s the sound of rain, the sound of thunder, the sound of the earth breathing beneath their feet. It’s all very serious.

Then Shouyou squats down, his face in his hands, and starts laughing. Perhaps Miya Atsumu is not real. Perhaps Miya Atsumu is a serial killer. After the north tower and the infirmary and everything else that Shouyou has done to him, out of misguided interest or curiosity, this is the thing that gets to him. The distance. The lack of attention.

“Your highness,” Atsumu touches his hand to Shouyou’s forehead when he finally looks up, as if he thinks he has a fever. “Are you okay?”

Shouyou brushes his hand away. He has no time for dramatics. The Spring Ball is a week away and he intends on surviving this ordeal, not dying in it.

He points imperiously in Atsumu’s direction. “You’re coming to the Spring Ball.”

“I can’t dance.”

“You’re lying.”

“I don’t have an outfit.”

“You will.”

Atsumu scoffs, but underneath the grandeur he’s taken back. Slowly, clumsily, Shouyou is learning to read him.

“I haven’t been invited,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like the only thing standing between him and the ballroom with the floor-to-ceiling windows and the marbled flooring is his name. The name of a boy with no witnessed history; the name of a commoner.

Shouyou sighs. “I can fix that.” He flicks Atsumu between the eyes, trying to hide his incredulity. There is only one name he has been adamant about adding to the guest list, though it appears the owner of said name has not realized that Shouyou treasures him quite this much. Shouyou should have expected this, and yet he is surprised all the same. This boy is a study in contradictions.

“Huh?” Atsumu regards him with suspicion yet again. Always the suspicion with him. Always the lack of a heart.

Shouyou tucks his rose behind Atsumu’s ear, and Atsumu lets him do it, his eyes wide, his ears burning. “I will invite you myself.”

  
⚜

  
“You can do that?”

“Atsumu. You may not want to believe this, but I am the crown prince of this kingdom.”

“...I’m sorry.”

  
⚜

  
Several days later, Atsumu wakes up in his room in the servants’ quarters, with the unmistakable sensing that someone had broken in while he was asleep. He tenses up, reaching for the sword at the foot of his bed, but his hand brushes against the softness of silk instead. There is something draped across the sheets. He takes in the smooth white fabric, the epaulettes, and the rows of gold soutaches, while his heart slides slowly back into place. He is not going to be killed today. He has not been found out yet.

But perhaps it would be better for all of them if he were. The thought creeps into his mind like an assassin disguised as a temptress, offering him fruit from the garden of Eden. You could end this right now, it whispers, holding out an apple. You could let him go.

He rolls out of bed and pinches the uniform between his fingers, holding it up before him. It catches the light like a chalice. It has been a long time since Miya Atsumu held anything this exquisite.

He is about to put the entire thing behind him when he sees the note. The calligraphy is loose and hurried, barely legible. The slip of parchment looks like it was torn out of something printed; something serious. On it are the date and time for the Spring Ball, alongside a list of things to bring: yourself, your manners, something to attack Oikawa Tooru with.

And one more thing. Beside the crumpled note is an earring. There is no explanation for its presence and no return address; it looks eerily familiar. He holds it up beside his own earring in the tiny mirror hammered to his closet.

It must be a trick of the light, he thinks, and then goes to get ready for the day.

  
⚜

  
The Spring Ball is a festive occasion. It is a celebration of a kingdom’s history, which is to say that it is a celebration of life. Hinata Shouyou’s life. What remains of Solis’s nobility will be invited to partake in this celebration; they will be asked to bring gifts and children and suitors. There will be food and drink in bountiful amounts. There will be dancing. There will be a live orchestra presenting antiquated music that reeks of wealth and outdated tradition, and then there will be hunting.

Because the Spring Ball is the first step in determining what happens to the royal family of Solis, after time has tolled to its end. Who will succeed the old king? Who will the young prince choose? Will history be allowed to repeat itself, the way it always has, the way it’s always been hidden?

Do not let the cheer of the cooks in the royal kitchen deceive you. Do not be tricked by the songs of the stable boys, and the chambermaids who clean the royal chambers while humming hymns. The people of this kingdom are not blind to the old king’s deeds, even if they have always been helpless to stop him.

So when the Spring Ball comes, they will celebrate. They will drink until all the tables are turned into horses and all the horses are let out into the courtyard, and they will hold their breaths, and they will hold their breaths until the young prince announces what he will do with all the heads that Hiroto the Vanquisher has cut off. Your father has cut off so many heads, your highness. The people expect a publicity statement. Are you for or against your bloodstained history? Do you know what happened? Do you know what really happened?

There are multiple versions of the truth running amok in this castle. Choose one. You will have to choose one.

  
⚜

  
“I’m sick. I’m horribly and miserably sick. I am going to die soon.”

“Your highness, they are waiting for you.”

“Can they wait a while longer?”

“Your highness. You are already twenty minutes past your scheduled time of arrival.”

Shouyou runs his fingers through his hair. His horrible peacock-looking stylist has slicked it back, and now his forehead feels. Exposed. He hates it. He hates the dull chatter drifting up from the ballroom and he hates the fact that they made him wear his cloak properly, for once, and he hates the powder his horrible peacock-looking stylist has dabbed on his cheeks. This will breathe life into you, she said. I don’t need to look alive, Shouyou replied obstinately. I feel completely dead inside.

Sakusa clicks his tongue. “Dramatic, dramatic. You will have to do better if you are to become king.”

“Shut up.” Shouyou peeks through the curtains again. He is this close to being damned to hell forever; beyond the red curtains is a raised platform, from which the entire ballroom is visible. There are two flights of stairs on each side, with large, grand steps that lead to the floor. Once he steps onto that platform, he will be trapped. Everyone in the room will be inundated with the same purpose: to catch the attention of the young, naive prince, to charm him, and to dance with him. Shouyou would rather dance with a tree than any of these people.

He is still thinking about the benefits of wooing a cypress when he is pushed from behind by Sakusa. The golden flames his evil executive committee has selected are just annoying enough, that for a moment it hurts him to look at anything. He blinks furiously, willing his eyes to adjust. He has to stay on his toes. He has to stay on his toes. If not someone else will take them from him. He wouldn’t put it past these people to just cut them off and run off with his body in a bag, like the tusks of some endangered magical creature. He is both ‘magical’ and ‘in danger’, anyway.

“THE PRINCE,” Sakusa announces from his safe haven, his voice amplified by one of Oikawa’s gimmicks. Like he could have said anything else. Like he could have said ‘THE COWARD’ or ‘THE TERRIBLY CURSED’ or ‘THE BOY WITH A HOLE IN HIS HEAD AND A RUINED RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS FATHER’. Shouyou sighs inwardly. Already the ballroom has frozen in a still-frame of wealth and beauty, all the ladies in their evening gowns and the men in their gold-kissed suits stopping mid-step to gape at his poor face. He wishes they would stay like that. Perhaps he would enjoy himself better if surrounded by statues.

But he knows some of these statues. He knows enough of these statues that if he plays his cards right, he will not be forced to talk to the young duchess of the eastern hills at all. To make matters worse or better, he invited one of them, personally, in a gazebo surrounded by blue roses and rain. This particular, debonair statue is looking up at him from a corner of the ballroom, his fingers curled around the stem of a wine glass. His eyes are wide, his lips parted. His glass is going to fall. It is definitely going to fall.

Atsumu looks like he’s just seen the face of god. But there’s only Shouyou standing on this raised platform in the middle of all this arranged chaos; it must be a trick of the light. Shouyou bows carefully. The room is so quiet, he can hear the rustle of his own clothes. He wonders what would happen if he were to shout the name of the one he wants, right here, right now.

He places one gloved hand on the parapet. Forty-eight pairs of eyes trace this movement, like a hunter watching its prey through the thick undergrowth of a forest, through the white dunes of a desert.

Well then, he thinks dryly. Let the Spring Ball begin.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [we have it all](https://open.spotify.com/track/4bd2syoHunggIjewdw8KiA?si=S0Ow-9dRT4q-3jaIYkw4Vw)

“Your highness, I’m so sorry,” Yachi stares in dismay at the floor. It is, admittedly, a beautiful floor, made of a single layer of smooth marble upon which the royal insignia has been etched in gold leaf. She glances up again miserably. “Are your feet okay?”

Shouyou resists the urge to laugh. Laughing would be impolite, and it would make Yachi sad, and when Yachi is sad it takes several hours and bottles of wine to lift her spirits back into the visible human realm. “Of course,” he says, and means it. Yachi is the daughter of one of the castle’s oldest court mages. They have known each other and their bad habits for years now. He is, at least in her vicinity, used to being tripped on.

“I’m sorry,” she says again. Shouyou shakes his head and twirls her, her small hand clasped in his. The blood-red hem of her dress flares up as she spins, revealing a rich volume of white lace underneath.

“Please,” he says, smiling wide enough to break a mirror. “It is a joy to dance with you.”

Yachi rolls her eyes even as she continues to just-barely avoid stepping on his shoes. “Hinata. You sound eighty-seven.”

“Yachi, most people do not live to be eighty-seven.”

Yachi scoffs. As she does this, her eyes are drawn to another pair of dancers, this time two girls with long, flowing hair and gray eyes, who seem to have abducted the beat of the live orchestra and snuck it into their own musical accompaniment. She keeps her hand on Shouyou’s shoulder but her feet begin to slow, and, oh. Here it comes again. Shouyou dodges as best as he can, and is caught in the crossfire of her heels anyway.

He inclines his head in their direction. “Why don’t you ask her for a dance?” he asks. He is unsure which girl is the reason for Yachi’s bright eyes, but confident that it is one of them. Ever since Kiyoko vanished into the hills, Yachi has been searching for something to soothe her wounded heart. Perhaps this will be it.

To his surprise, Yachi laughs at him. “Your highness,” she says, reverting back to using his formal address, as if this will create enough distance between them to pardon her rudeness. “I could say the same to you.”

Shouyou coughs. “Excuse me?”

The orchestra plays on. They are set to play until the end of the next hour, at which point the next ensemble will be magically hefted into the orchestra pit, and this one will be let loose at the buffet table. Until then, Shouyou is condemned to spin and be spun and hold hands and people and shoulders, waists, corsets and silver coattails. He was not particularly fond of white and gold as the theme, but then and again. The executive committee did not take a single one of his suggestions, barring the one about the chandeliers.

Yachi smiles at him pleasantly. She seems to have gained some confidence in her dancing in exchange for the loss of Shouyou’s sense of stability in the known world. It is entirely gone. He had come here to outlive a hunt, and now he is stuck in a wolf’s pelt.

“You’re not the only one with your eyes on him,” she adds unhelpfully, and she is right; Shouyou may be the star attraction of the evening, but Atsumu has garnered his own circle of curious admirers. Is it his earring? Is it his hair? Is it his strange, effervescent charm, and that awful way in which he skirts around serious conversation? As if Miya Atsumu gives a damn about you. He is playing with your feelings. He does not really care.

Lisa has outdone herself with his outfit. She has kept the red coat and the epaulettes, but his collar is black now, and his pants tapered. The white cape draped over one shoulder shimmers as he walks and talks, tall and sleek and beautiful. Shouyou almost walks into a wall. He almost walks into Yachi.

“Good luck,” she says, curtseying with a laugh as the music hits a lull. She twirls out of sight, and Shouyou is left floundering in the middle of the dance floor for the briefest of moments, before Kageyama stomps grumpily into view.

  
⚜

  
“Can you look at me.”

“I am looking at you.”

“No, you are looking at Miya Atsumu.”

“I am not looking at Miya Atsumu.”

Kageyama cranes his neck to one side, unimpressed. “Lies,” he declares, and it is only the fact that he is the prime minister’s son that prevents Shouyou from kneeing him in the stomach. That, and the fact that he was the first person to speak to him in the dining hall all those years ago, breaking the candlelit vigil that the castle had observed for months. For the first few years of his life, everyone was terrified of him.

Kageyama Tobio is terrified of nothing. It is not only his status as the prime minister’s son that allows this, though it certainly helped build the foundation. Kageyama simply cannot be arsed to give a damn about what the world thinks of him, and his interests in archery and swordplay and divination. Besides, he is good at the archery, and his divinations are always either wrong, or a precise prediction of the future.

So when Kageyama Tobio says with full confidence that you are lying, the odds are that you are, actually, lying. Shouyou does not move to deny this, glaring unsubtly at him as Kageyama, the clueless, yet well-intentioned giant that he is, dips him. He sticks out his tongue. Fool, Shouyou thinks. Fool fool fool.

“Atsumu seems busy,” Kageyama observes. Shouyou wonders how many times he will have to hear this name before the night is over. This is his Spring Ball. How characteristically rude of Atsumu to walk in and make it about himself.

But he invited him, and now Atsumu is here, and, Shouyou hides his face behind the pleated silk of Kageyama’s ascot as he thinks this, he looks good. Maybe this is why he is being so careless tonight. Or maybe he has some horrible debilitating sickness that is going to kill him. Maybe he is distracted.

He is this close to discovering the answer to his distraction, and therefore, by extension, the universe, when he twirls Kageyama, stretching up on tip-toes to keep their hands joined. Kageyama complains that Shouyou could have done a better job. He is right.

But Shouyou isn’t listening. Shouyou is watching the edge of the ballroom where, seconds ago, Atsumu had been holding his fifth flute of champagne, laughing in a weird, uptight manner at something the duchess of the eastern hills had said. Now the duchess is standing by herself, looking a little lost. He almost pities her. It is a jarring experience to be divested of the lovely catastrophe that is Miya Atsumu, with his single jade earring and his pretty-boy smile.

But that’s not the point. The point is Miya Atsumu is gone. Shouyou steps on Kageyama’s foot again, his hand on Kageyama’s waist gripping hard enough to leave a mark. Kageyama sighs, loudly, and sends him off to his next partner with the blessings of his family.

  
⚜

  
Miya Atsumu wants to be forgiven. He wants the mercy of his parents, who are dead, and his twin, who is dead. He wants his pain to be acknowledged. If it is acknowledged, then it will be real, and if he is real, then he can hold a sword. These things can be inferred, even if he has thus left them out of the story. They are true.

Miya Atsumu wants to be seen. By the gods, by their disciples, by whoever will stop to stare at this straggler by the wayside. He has come a long way from home, with a satchel and a pile of borrowed histories. He has a secret in his fist, which is threatening to eat him, even now, hungry as a house with a gaping mouth for a door.

But tonight is a night of miracles. Tonight, he is going to dance with Hinata Shouyou if it kills him. Not because he’s been told to do that, but because he’s a selfish asshole, and he wants it. He is not used to being in this position. He is not used to not being wanted. But he saw the prince dancing with Kageyama Tobio, laughing in that heartbreakingly shy way of his, and he came just shy of running up the side of the wall and declaring war on the gods.

Before any of this, however, he has to do what he’s been told to do, and if that kills him then it will be a pity. Atsumu will never come to terms with his Pinocchio heart and his marionette lungs, and the reason for the bomb in his chest. Miya Atsumu is currently caught in a spider’s web, which is caught in the den of a fox, which is caught underneath the moat of a castle. Miya Atsumu is walking down a hallway he shouldn’t be in. Miya Atsumu is going to send this castle to its knees if it kills him, and if it doesn’t kill him, then he hopes someone else does, anyway. It’s the least they can do for him. Perhaps then the prince will forget faster. But no. What prince? What castle? Miya Atsumu isn’t available for comment. Please look for him after hours, when he has taken off the mask under his skin. Please look for him after they have lit the fire he was not told would burn at all.

After all, tonight is a night of miracles.

  
⚜

  
Shouyou grinds his heel into Oikawa Tooru’s golden shoe. The shoe, like the rest of him, is somehow shimmering and exuding a halo of light at the same time. It is also likely protected by at least twenty-seven different spells, of which the first fifteen he has already forgotten are there at all. Even now, Shouyou earnestly doubts that he would be able to win against Oikawa at anything. Oikawa is the man in the moon.

Once, many years ago, he had taken Shouyou into the city. On the way there they had passed by a field of flowers, and Shouyou, fourteen-and-a-half, had run through the sea of dazzling blue while Oikawa leaned against the flank of the hippogriff he had charmed away from the palace stables. Back then, Shouyou trusted Oikawa with his life. Oikawa had been the one to explain the mystery of magic to him after his mother had passed away. He had been the one who showed Shouyou what he could still do, even with the gloves and the markings and the fear.

“Fear,” Oikawa began on some other afternoon, sweeping his arms grandly to each side. He had been wearing those same old gauntlets for as long as Shouyou could remember, and their whiteness stood out in contrast to the black of his shirt, the bright blue of his mana crystal. Hanging in the center of his gold neck piece was a red jewel: the jewel of the old king, marking him as one of the king’s people.

Shouyou looked up from the apple he had been playing with. Today, Oikawa had taught him how to spell it for murder.

“Fear?” he asked.

Oikawa retrieved the apple from his hands. “Fear commands your attention.” He tossed it up in the air. Once, twice, the apple spun, gleaming in the morning light. “But you, darling, are a prince. You cannot allow fear to command you.” He caught the apple again, raising it to his lips. Shouyou stood up in a frenzy, knocking over the books that had been piled up before him.

Oikawa took a bite. “Your highness.” He smiled, sharp as knives. “You must command it instead.”

The apple did not kill him. It was not strong enough to. Shouyou knew this, the way he knew no one in this kingdom had the power to kill Oikawa Tooru. But this did not mean Oikawa Tooru would live forever. It only meant that he had succeeded at hanging onto the merry-go-round of life, for long enough to develop a knack for staying alive.

“I don’t get it,” said Shouyou, who did not get it.

Oikawa bit into the apple’s core, crunching the seeds with morbid enthusiasm. “Do not worry. You will.”

Years later, he had taken Shouyou to the fields outside the castle, and Shouyou had been confronted with a sea of blue, and blue, and blue. As the sun climbed the golden steps to the throne room of the sky, he rubbed salt out of his eyes and called for Oikawa’s attention. He had been trying to make a flower crown, and failing. Oikawa had been talking to the hippogriff.

“Why don’t I remember being eight?” he asked. “Or nine? Or ten?”

He had asked it out of boredom, the way children left alone will try to build ladders to the moon. But Oikawa Tooru looked sad. He never looked sad. He would never look sad again.

“I’m sorry,” he said, stroking the head of the hippogriff he had stolen. He would return it later, and it would live fruitfully next few years until, crazed from all the blood it had been forced to spill across twenty-seven palaces, it would escape, and return to the castle courtyard to kill a man. This would become the incident that would lead to the removal and subsequent reattachment of Miya Atsumu’s arm. But none of them knew this yet.

“I’m sorry,” Oikawa repeated, but by then, Shouyou had already wandered away.

  
⚜

  
The fifth rule of being a prince: don’t lie.

  
⚜

  
“I’m sorry?”

“I said,” Shouyou repeats, still grinding at Oikawa’s shoe. He seems to be having the time of his life in spite of his best efforts. “It’s none of your business.”

Oikawa clutches at his heart like he’s been stabbed. “Your highness. I am wounded.”

“Sure you are.”

“I absolutely am.”

Shouyou has lost all faith in the universe. It has clearly given up on him and no longer considers his wishes worthy of listening to, seeing how he has been left to the wolves, the wolves being a single wolf, the single wolf being Oikawa Tooru.

Several hours before this, Kageyama had scoffed at him for his subpar dancing skills, and then sent him off to Tsukishima, here on behalf of the librarian’s guild, which is still in an uproar regarding the affair between one of its members and the chambermaid. Only Tsukishima has escaped from the drama, because he simply does not care. In fact, he cares so little that he disappeared from the ballroom within five minutes of Shouyou being tossed his way. Shouyou was left like a fish out of water, within striking distance of at least twelve, single and powder-faced nobles. It was only thanks to Yukie, present on behalf of the royal kitchen, that he was not swallowed in an instant, but then Yukie had proceeded to give him a blow-by-blow of her wedding ceremony with Kaori, which she had already done several times in the last few weeks. Shouyou thanked her kindly for her time, and then snuck off to the refreshments table, where he inhaled three glasses of champagne in a glum attempt to drown out his demons.

Enter Oikawa Tooru. The alcohol has not done much to impair his cognitive abilities, or repair his mood. Oikawa once told him it was one of the thousand-and-one curses of being a magic user, to which Shouyou had asked: what are the other thousand? Oikawa simply smiled at him cryptically, and tapped his staff against the floor.

Enter Oikawa Tooru, who is so heavily enchanted that he apparently no longer experiences physical touch or emotions. “I told you not to come,” Shouyou grouses. He has given up on breaking Oikawa’s foot and resigned himself to finding an escape route later. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Tsukishima and Yamaguchi clustered with a handful of familiar faces beneath one of the chandeliers, each of which is carved like the branches of a tree. He sighs as he follows the rhythm of the music. He has been abandoned.

“Oh,” Oikawa says, like he has a balloon between his teeth, which he is trying very hard to pop. “But you looked lonely.”

Two steps forward, one step to the side. Two steps forward, one step back. “I was enjoying the refreshments.”

“You were enjoying the refreshments alone.”

Shouyou pinches Oikawa through the fabric of his shirt. Oikawa does not so much as flinch, and Shouyou thinks with a sigh that he could have at least taught him how to create this particular enchantment. It is not every day one finds an opportunity to feed an enemy an apple. Most of the time, the enemy lives under your roof, and any apple fed to their lips would, by extension, be fed to yourself. It’s two birds with one stone, only you are the bird and the person throwing the stone. Only there is another bird in the air, and the bird is god, and god is laughing at you.

“Well. Do you have a problem with that?” he asks, scowling.

Oikawa’s butterflies are glowing now, twirling faster and faster around him as they move across the ballroom. “Not me,” he muses, “But you—”

He hums amicably. “Missing your prince?”

Shouyou stops dancing. He stops staring at the exit to the ballroom behind Oikawa’s shoulder. He stops running a thousand different scenarios through his head: one where Atsumu sneaks back in half an hour later, looking immaculate and lovely and carrying a bouquet of roses. One where Atsumu reappears like a specter and takes him by the hand, and they run off into the night. One where Atsumu is the one who emerges from behind the red curtains, bowing from the top of the platform, and then calls out Shouyou’s name.

Oikawa stops dancing just as he does. Then there are two motionless figures in the center of the beautiful castle ballroom, with the floor-to-ceiling windows and the marbled floor and the high, domed ceiling, the dinner plate of a ceiling. The ceiling made of glass, through which half of the moon can be glimpsed, smiling shyly down at its mortal subjects.

Shouyou opens his mouth, closes it, and opens it again.

“Are you my father?”

Oikawa tilts his head to his attractive side, the golden chains adorning his ears shimmying with light. The clear crystal is distracting. It is always distracting. Shouyou hates it.

“Deflection will not work on me, your highness.”

“I am not,” Shouyou forces his gaze away from his ear. “Deflecting anything.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Is that your final answer?”

Shouyou glares at his feet. It is a magic user’s curse to be immune to alcohol, but he can feel a different kind of intoxication catching up to him, bordering dangerously on panic. He is standing on the edge of a cliff. Behind him is the familiar landscape of the castle, with its long, winding hallways and its tapestries of gold and wine-red. Beneath him is the blue of the sea. It is cold and unfamiliar. It threatens to suck the skin off his bones with its siren song, with its beauty.

The room is revolving in slow circles, all the ladies in their evening gowns and the men in their gold-kissed suits coming gently to a stop. Time sits back on its haunches. Oikawa does not look like he wants to hurt him or help him, or even like he is particularly excited to be here. He is just doing what he always does: whatever brings him the most amusement.

Despite his best efforts, it appears that he is stuck.

  
⚜

  
He didn’t grow up lonely. But the circumstances of your birth determine much of what you can and cannot do, and Shouyou was born in a castle. You cannot go drinking in the city taverns. You cannot take off your gloves. You cannot go on a long, meandering journey to the west on one of the castle’s numerous hippogriffs, no matter how tired you are of seeing your father’s bleak face, and you cannot lie, you cannot betray the name of the royal family. You are a Hinata. You are one name on a scroll. You are a legacy, or at least the back-end of it, tacked on like an afterthought.

And yet, you are alone. Why the long face? Why the red eyes? When Shouyou was thirteen he rode one of the horse-drawn carts into the city for the first time. What he saw there was not the landscape which Sakusa had described in his deadpan, poetic voice. The streets were dirty and unswept. Things were broken: windows, first. Then people.

Miya Atsumu was not the first. If you want to argue semantics, then Oikawa was the first person to hold his gloved hand without flinching. Kageyama was the first child in the castle to sit next to him in the great hall and steal eggs from his plate. Yachi was the first person to call him Hinata without reverence, or fear, or admiration.

But perhaps it doesn’t matter if Atsumu was the second or the third or the fourth, or if he arrived late to the party, or if all of Shouyou’s instincts are screaming at him to get away from that gorgeous thing with the olive eyes and the slicked-back hair. Who talks like a trickling stream dragged across a row of knives. Who holds a sword like the key to the universe.

Because Miya Atsumu has the same eyes as him. He has the same fucking eyes. And they are two different people, with two sets of ghosts in the bathroom mirror, two sets of parents hung up in the rafters. But they both know what a haunting looks like.

So one day, this boy with this ghost and this freak-show history walked into the glass castle. He looked at the boy with the other ghost, and the other freak-show history, and he laughed at him. And he made fun of him for being bad with his words, and his feelings, and his thoughts. And he followed him into a thousand different rooms.

And when the sun had renewed itself on the nectar of yesterday’s poisons, when the truth had come out that the boy was not a prince, but rather a monster, a horror-show, a freak-show gone wrong, he pointed his finger at him, cool and incisive, and said:

That’s no fucking Medusa. That’s a person.

  
⚜

  
While all of this has been going down, which the story acknowledges is a lot, Hinata Shouyou is facing his childhood fear of abandonment, one of the chandeliers gets cut loose. It turns out it’s not just a golden fire, it’s a magical one, and now everything is burning, but our protagonist doesn’t realize any of this. People are shouting from the exit for them to run. Oikawa has his wrist in an iron grip.

Shouyou isn’t paying attention to Oikawa. He isn’t paying attention to the chorus of voices behind him, or the flames creeping across the marble towards their feet, or the flurry of court mages descending from the glass ceiling. He is standing, perfectly still, near the looming ring of fire. His eyes are stuck to the bright red glare of it. Like knives. And Shouyou is no stranger to knives or fire or fear, Shouyou has been afraid of everything for as long as he can remember, but the image of the ten-foot-tall flames and the wailing human orchestra is too real to run from. It is real. It is no dream.

By the time Akaashi reaches Oikawa’s side, ready to deal with what is, in the broader scheme of things, a relatively small mishap, Hinata Shouyou is already half a world away.

  
⚜

  
“Oikawa-san—”

“—Wait. Something’s happening.”

“Yes, Oikawa-san, the ballroom is on fire.”

“No. I mean with the prince. Do you see that? He is remembering something. This moment will matter later, young Akaashi. Stay your hand.”

  
⚜

  
What is the prince afraid of?

  
⚜

  
“FIRE.”

“Yes, that is,” one of the court mages comments dryly. “That is fire.” He squats down beside Shouyou and squeezes his shoulder. Shouyou shifts a little, turning to look at him. The black hood of his cloak rustles, revealing a small face.

“You ready to fire the next one?”

Shouyou frowns. “Do I have to?”

The court mage turns to look over his shoulder. Behind him, Hinata Hiroto is dressed for war. Hiroto nods.

The court mage looks back at Shouyou. “We believe in you, your highness.” He gestures at the figures in front of him. There are five or six this time, maybe seven; the image is unclear, everything blurred around the edges like a painting. “All you have to do is point at them and think, really hard, about how scared you are.” He smiles. “You’re scared, aren’t you? You don’t want them to hurt you or your father.”

Shouyou shivers. He shakes his head earnestly. “I don’t want that,” he says.

The mage smiles again, smaller this time, more briefly. He spins Shouyou around so he’s facing the five or six or seven across the room. They are trapped, already, by a ring of fire, bunching up their corseted dresses and their gold-trimmed suits, as if all their regalia will save them from the heat. As if god doesn’t have hands made of diamonds, and eyes made of teeth.

“All right. Are you ready?”

  
⚜

  
“FIRE.”

The court mage scoffs. It is a different one this time, her face rounder, her hair gray instead of black. But she has the same hand on Shouyou’s shoulder, and the same look in her eyes. She leans over the outer wall of the castle, peering down at the figures below. This time there are twenty, twenty five; a small number of troops for a small kingdom. At their head is a figure with a red flag. She points at him.

“That’s the one you want to hit, okay?”

Shouyou nods. He is a little scared. He has already done one thing today that he has never done before, which is to use his magic in a way that Oikawa-san never taught him to. If he is to be honest, he is a little tired on top of being a little scared, and the combination has left him winded. The figure with the red flag is still moving. Several figures at the back are not. They are the previous thirty, the previous thirty five.

“All you have to do,” the mage says in an almost sing-song voice, stretching his hands out in front of him. Shouyou is not wearing gloves, of course. Shouyou is never wearing gloves in these memories. “Is point at him, and pray really, really hard.”

Shouyou holds his hands out obediently. He can see everything from up here, but he cannot make out the details. He cannot tell you if the sky is blue or bright green. He cannot tell you if the sun is about to rise, or if it is about to set, or if there is anything at all around him beyond the hand on his shoulder, and the stranger at his back.

“All right, your highness. Let’s do this.”

  
⚜

  
“FIRE.”

Someone laughs.

Another court mage. He looks a little tense, his face a little haggard. His hair is the blue of rivers, his skin pale as moonlight, and he chews his lip as he grips Shouyou’s shoulder through his cloak.

“Is that enough?” he asks, not to Shouyou. Behind him, someone shakes their head. They are in a courtyard, someone else’s courtyard, and the bodies are piling higher. Five, six, seven. Eight, nine, ten. Each of them burnt to a crisp. Each of them faceless, now, where before they had been cold. It is the boy with the black hood, they had whispered. It is him.

Out of view, a voice sounds out, “there should be two more.”

The mage sighs. He stands up, taking Shouyou by the hand. They make their way through the castle, which belongs to someone else, which is eerie and quiet. The afternoon is hot and dreary, and sweat sticks to Shouyou’s skin underneath his cloak. He wishes they would give him a white one. He wishes he could have his gloves back.

When they have been into every room in this castle that is not theirs, in this kingdom that is not theirs, they arrive, finally at the end of a hallway. The door is nondescript, not adorned with the embellishments that usually give away one’s lineage. But the air around it is unusually still. They break the lock on the door. They step into foreign country.

“Congratulations, I’m the only one left,” says the faceless figure inside. He is small, barely Shouyou’s height, and he is shaking. Yet he laughs through his fear. He laughs through the fire. He laughs through Shouyou’s magic as it works its way into his skin, into his veins, igniting every cell in his body.

Eventually, he stops laughing.

“Good job,” Hiroto says, patting Shouyou on the head, and his stomach churns with something ashy. Shouyou tries to pull at his hands but they don’t come off at the wrists. There is no endless soundtrack of screaming, no fire licking up the column of his throat. He pinches the back of his hand. He pinches the back of his hand. He pinches the back of his hand so hard, his nails cut through his skin, and blood begins to well up.

Nothing changes. The boy is still dead, keeled over on the floor, his hands held up in a sign of peace. There could be someone in the closet, or there could be not. Shouyou does not know. The king does not care.

You have to care, Shouyou, you have to realize where you are. Open your eyes. This is not a dream.

  
⚜

  
The sixth rule of being a prince: don’t cry.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [enchanted](https://open.spotify.com/track/04S1pkp1VaIqjg8zZqknR5?si=FP0udU-BQTiV6g6Df5IeoQ)

He ducks back into the ballroom after midnight. He has an apology prepared, a story about having to attend to one of the hippogriffs who is, for the record, his friend now, and then being caught up in the royal kitchen, and then being assaulted by Natsu, who had been looking for someone to help her re-braid her hair. But the ballroom is empty. An odd smell lingers in the air, like something had been burnt here, and then wheeled away on a stretcher. Though the festivities are over, the castle is holding its breath.

This is the first sign that something is wrong. The second sign is the evil, butterfly-adorned man leaning against the red curtains.

“You’re late,” he says flatly.

Atsumu squints up at him. He touches the fabric of his cape, not accustomed to it still.

“What happened?”

Oikawa feigns dizziness, falling sideways until he hits the other side of the curtained doorway. He rests his hand delicately against his forehead.

“Bad things.” He straightens up. He points his staff at Atsumu. The bright blue gem sitting atop the golden staff bobs in his direction, threateningly, while the butterfly beneath it seethes with indifference. This is the third sign that something is wrong. Not that it is needed, not when the room looks like this, and the boy looks like that. But Atsumu sees it. Atsumu takes a step back.

“I don’t know what you have been doing up until now. I don’t know why you are in this castle. But know this, Miya Atsumu of Canis.” Oikawa’s eyes flash angrily.

“You should have come back earlier.”

  
⚜

  
He can’t say he’s already asleep when he hears the knocking on his balcony door because he’s not, technically, asleep. He has been making an effort to stay awake, precisely because he is afraid of falling asleep. He does not want to go to sleep. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees fire.

But the knocking continues. Two fast knocks, one slow, two fast. Silence follows like a body down the steps and for a moment Shouyou wonders if he imagined everything. Then the knocking comes again: two, one, two.

The royal chambers are on the fifth floor. It is the highest floor of the castle if one disregards the four towers in each wing, and the lookout tower at the center, within which the guards look out for things, as lookouts are wont to do, while they play cards and talk about the latest in the ongoing saga between the chambermaids and the librarian’s guild. For years the reigning paradigm of thought has been that it is the safest for the royal family, if they are situated as far from the drawbridge as is possible. Up until now, it has been correct.

Shouyou’s room is at the end of the hallway. A balcony juts out of the ivy-kissed wall, and there are white lilies carved into the railings. The double doors that lead out to the balcony open outwards. The curtains are drawn.

He moves reluctantly to the balcony door and presses his forehead to the painted wood. He wonders if the person outside is a serial killer, sent by one of the kingdoms the king destroyed with borrowed hands. If they are, then he hopes the process will be quick and painless. He hopes Natsu will never have to hear of it.

One knock on his door means it’s Sakusa. Five to six knocks in quick succession means it’s Natsu, who has yet to learn the definition of self-restraint and is all the happier for it. Two fast knocks followed by a single, measured knock followed by two fast knocks, means that even if the hole in his head hasn’t gotten any better, and has instead gotten worse, someone is still waiting for him to let them in. Which is to say that, in spite of all his best efforts, the fire is still burning.

  
⚜

  
They say the late queen cried at her wedding. They claim it happened, the way people who have had a mystical encounter with god will swear that the hand they felt on their shoulder was real until the day they die. According to legend, which is a subset of history, which is a subset of the truth, the wedding was held in a sea of blue roses. The king smiled so hard at everything he had to get reconstructive facial magic done afterwards. The late queen cried.

So they know how this story started: a boy, and a girl, and something beautiful. Something they would have both laid down their lives for, which kept the bed warm even when they were out being dramatic and loud and dramatically loud, which kept the air in summer cool. But they also know how it ended, which was badly. This is the part Hinata Shouyou remembers. This is the part he cannot forget. After all, fear stems from a logical misconception about the world: that everything is out to hurt you, and that everyone who does not declare through their teeth that they are in love with you, will one day turn around, and stab you in the face. Which makes sense when you are him. It makes sense.

  
⚜

  
“I’m sorry.”

Is the first thing he says. The second thing he says is ‘I’m sorry’, again, but softer this time, like the words haven’t been shocked out of him. Then he stops, as if the softness has drained him.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

Shouyou stares at him, eyes wide. Atsumu is a wreck. His hair is mussed, and his clothes are scuffed, and there’s dried blood on his cheek, which is all wonderful, Shouyou has always been inclined towards people who look like they’ve just jumped off a burning building, but not now. Right now, he is breathing and not breathing. Here and not here. He is embarrassed by his own weakness; he wants to hide it.

“Of course I’m not.” He sucks in air, which inflates his lungs like balloons, and nothing changes. “Of course I’m fucking not.”

Shouyou swallows around the lump in his throat. He stares at the floor. A thin ledge of stone juts out of the floor, separating the white marble of the balcony from the wood paneling of his room. He nudges at it with the toe of his boot.

“I invited you to my stupid ball.” He draws his boot along that ledge, following it as far as it will go.

“I invited you to my stupid fancy ball,” he repeats, feeling lame and childish and petty. For a moment he wishes he were a bird. For a moment he wishes none of this were real, that he had never chosen to pull the boy out of the glass castle. That he had kept to himself, the way Sakusa said all good princes should.

He stares at his feet. “So where were you?”

His voice cracks at the end despite his best efforts and he hates himself for it. He prays to every god in the sky, that Atsumu doesn’t notice his red eyes, and his smudged eyeliner, and the fucked up heart the heavens gave him when they dragged his body out of the dirt, the fucked up thing he pawned in exchange for a few years of peace. He prays Atsumu doesn’t see a thing. Let Shouyou look angry or cold, if that means he won’t look like this.

“You can hit me if you want.”

Shouyou looks up.

“You can— you can throw me out of the castle, or toss me into the moat, or run me through with your sword. Whatever will make you feel better.” Atsumu clears his throat quietly. His face is turned to one side as if he is already bracing for impact, his earring the color of seafoam in the moonlight. “I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

Shouyou doesn’t let anything go. He doesn’t start crying, letting tears like pearls roll down his face while he wipes at his eyes with his sleeves. He was the kind of infant that pissed on you when you picked them up, and screamed into your ear until you were half-deaf. He was the kind of child that tried to build hot air balloons out of the curtains in the great hall. He is the kind of person who wants to think everything in the world is worth saving, except for maybe himself.

If you threw a Miya Atsumu into the moat, would he sink, or would he float? If you told a Miya Atsumu there was a one in three chance he was the key to the universe, would he turn that statistic on his head and crack the thing open for you, or would he run away?

“You’re horrible.” He steps out onto the balcony. Atsumu turns at the sound of his voice, the way Atsumu always turns when Shouyou calls his name, because Atsumu has always been here, since he showed up in the dead of winter with a jade earring for a history and a piece of hard, scratched-up metal for a heart. Atsumu in the courtyard in a stupidly attractive black button-up, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. Atsumu in the infirmary, his hair falling into his eyes, his nose red. Atsumu in the north tower, blue as the sky, as the sea, as the color of magic in its purest element. Blue is the color of the water, which runs into the seas and turns the skies into memories. Blue is the color of life.

“You’re the worst,” Shouyou mumbles. Lisa did a stunning job with Atsumu’s outfit. One day she will ask for all the space underneath the castle, and Shouyou will say yes. One day, all of this will be behind him.

“Am I?”

Shouyou nods into the fabric of Atsumu’s coat, digging his fingers into the fabric at his waist. Atsumu is sweaty and gross from all the stupid parkour tricks he must have pulled off in order to get up to Shouyou’s fifth floor balcony, his pulse fluttering in his throat. He could have taken the stairs. He could have avoided the branches and the bruising. But Atsumu never does the conventional thing; it is a subset of his personality. It is, by all means, likely what brought him here.

It’s cold out tonight. Spring wells up from the brown of the earth, threatening to take them back to winter, when all things were simple, and adversity was a pile of sticks in the doorway. The trees whisper things into their ears.

The proximity is dizzying. The boy is a dream. The dream is a thing of the past, but also a thing of the present. Multitudes, then. This place present in a hundred memories. This place immortal.

Atsumu sighs into his hair, tugging him in closer. “I guess I am.”

  
⚜

  
“You know—”

“—No, I don’t know—”

“—Thank you. As I was saying. The Spring Ball may have ended prematurely, but the night is not over yet.”

“Atsumu.”

“I didn’t climb this awful tree all the way up to your quarters for an embrace, your highness. Though it was a very sweet embrace.”

“Atsumu.”

“Well then. Shall we go?”

  
⚜

  
Atsumu grabs his wrist and pulls him out into the hallway, and then they’re off, hurtling through the fun-castle in the dark, the underbelly of the world. Oikawa’s mages have ensured the safe return of all guests and now that clean-up is over, everyone is either drunk out of their minds or passed out somewhere quiet, or both. It is just the two of them now. Just Shouyou, the prince with the red hands and the red eyes, and Atsumu, his hair flying out of his face as he runs, laughing, around the bend of a hallway. He doesn’t need Shouyou to tell him where to go now. He knows this castle as well as any of them.

Shouyou follows him timidly down the stairs. Sakusa’s voice echoes in his head, reminding him of what a prince should and shouldn’t do, but Atsumu refuses to let go of his wrist. Atsumu takes the steps three at a time, dragging Shouyou behind him, and it’s reckless, it’s dangerous, Shouyou’s moving so fast he can’t see a thing, but Atsumu doesn’t let him fall. Atsumu is determined to be some version of himself Shouyou swears he’s never seen before, and his head’s still fucked up, everything’s still fucked up, but right now he’s flying. He’s giddy. He’s laughing as Atsumu takes him past the doors of the great library, past the stables near the courtyard, past the gates separating the courtyard from the inner court, and then they’re standing in his mother’s rose garden. Shouyou doubles over, trying to catch his breath. Atsumu runs his fingers along the stem of one of the plants, humming.

“A rose,” he says, his voice rich and lovely. “For your highness.”

Shouyou straightens up. Atsumu tucks it behind his ear, his fingers brushing against the side of his face as he does so. “You know,” Shouyou says, emboldened by what little he can see, and how much he likes it. “I’ve never liked the way you call me ‘your highness’.”

“You haven’t?”

Shouyou takes a few meandering steps out of the garden, Atsumu trailing after him like the glowing tail of a comet. “Yes. It’s weird.”

“Then what would you prefer I call you?”

Atsumu pulls ahead. Shouyou lets him. It is as if he has carved a treasure map into the hopeless architectural monstrosity of this castle. X marks the spot. Sunrise marks the end of the dream. A blue rose marks the old lovers of the dead, stamped into the earth with both feet.

When Atsumu finally lets go of his hand, breathless and sweaty and half-delirious, Shouyou looks down, and finds himself right back where he started. Carved into the marble floor is the royal insignia, its wings spread like a bird in flight. The room is dark and formless. Above their heads, moonlight shines through the glass ceiling, splintering across their faces. Like they are deep-sea explorers, looking up past miles and miles of ocean.

Shouyou tilts his head towards that high, invisible ceiling. The moon smiles at him with half of her face, promising secrets she cannot divulge.

“I told them I preferred to keep the lighting natural,” he says, sighing, looking back towards the ground.

Atsumu chuckles. “It would have been a safety hazard to have fifty people dancing in near darkness.” Shouyou recalls the flurries of silk, the keen sensation of being watched by a thousand eyes. He sighs.

“Although.” The hour is early, the night sweet as a ripe peach, soft and just-peeled. The castle has fallen asleep in a pool of spilled champagne. They are not alone in this world. No one ever truly is, no matter what the poets may say. But tonight they are as birds are when set free from the top of a mountain: giddy, young, emboldened by what they have seen on the horizon. New to this version of themselves. New to life itself.

“Although?” Shouyou repeats.

Atsumu inclines his head, then the rest of his torso. He bows respectfully, smiling up at Shouyou from under his lashes. The gloved hand he holds out is pale and glowing, his fingers uncurled, his palm facing the heavens.

“There is no such problem when there are only two.”

Shouyou stares at his hand like he has just offered to throw him out the window.

“Atsumu?”

“I believe the term here is, ‘may I have this dance’?”

  
⚜

  
Can he? Can you? Is hell a place, or a person; is heaven? Shouyou swallows a glass heart with a glass top. Shouyou swallows every bit of ash in his mouth he has accumulated over the course of lifetimes. Shouyou swallows fear, and then he says fuck it. Fuck this thing in his head. It’s spring.

  
⚜

  
Atsumu lied about not being able to dance. Shouyou had guessed this, the way he guessed he had lied about the laughter and about the knives. Yet he is surprised, all the same, when Atsumu pulls him in with all the ease of a soldier going to war; as if he knows this part of the story, just as well as any boy with a crown. He nudges Shouyou’s hand to his shoulder. His fingers curl around the curve of his waist. Close enough to dazzle, close enough to lose, Shouyou wonders what it would take to lose the rest of that distance.

“Um, Atsumu,” he says, looking decidedly at anything but his face. This is a challenge. He can see the dark fan of his lashes and the pink of his lips. His stupid jade earring flashes like a star, every time it catches the light.

“Atsumu. There’s no music. How are we going to—?”

“Shh.”

Atsumu leans in, his breath tickling his neck. For a moment, Shouyou forgets about the falling apart and the coming together. For a moment, the air is still enough to press your mouth against.

Then Atsumu starts to sing. It is no song Shouyou knows. It is nothing like the melodies Solis has carried out of its long, sinuous past. When people speak of music, he thinks of the lovely, and the lively, and the quick. The castanets and the bagpipes and the trill of the piano, fingers flying across the keys, a violin in the shade of the curtains. Shouyou knows music the way he knows life, fast-paced and licking at your heels. Shouyou knows dance the way Oikawa has taught it to him: like a fight for your life, like fleeing.

Atsumu holds his hand with reverence.

But his singing is terrible, his singing sucks. He has the range of a horse trying to sing falsetto. The three-step of their waltz becomes a two-step, then a five, then seven, and he can’t seem to keep his composure whenever their eyes meet, so he keeps his eyes on the ground instead; he’s embarrassed. He’s shy. He worries his lower lip between his teeth, and he worries about how he sounds, and he’s probably thinking about how Shouyou should be anywhere but here in this moment, with this messy fuck of a boy, but Shouyou’s, well. Shouyou’s stuck. He’s stuck with this heart now, whatever it means, whatever it wants. He’s stuck here.

So he keeps dancing, and he keeps dancing, and when Atsumu’s lips approach the column of his throat with fairytale precision, Shouyou thinks: life is a funny thing. He thinks he’s probably had enough happiness to last a lifetime. He thinks it’s a miracle that he has managed to make it this far without knowing what it feels like to be stolen away by someone with eyes like this, who holds his hand like this, who dances like this.

“God,” he says, laughing quietly. “I knew you were lying when you said you couldn’t dance.”

The night is a secret. The night is something long, lonely, and precious, which they will fold into their pockets for keeping. In spite of the mussed hair and the dried blood and the tiredness, the exhaustion etched into his face, Atsumu is luminous. He stops singing for just long enough to reply, fast and high and breathless.

“Well, it is no dance you will be familiar with. But where I come from—” They are running now, running and dancing and flying and Atsumu’s hands are on his waist, both of them, and he is urging Shouyou to jump, to take a leap through some terrifying uncharted airspace.

When the saints come marching in, march out. March right out of there. Fly out of that room like a bird with a fist for a heart, because this is that moment. This is the moment before the storm becomes a catastrophe, and the catastrophe becomes the boy.

“—Where I come from, this is dance.”

  
⚜

  
The seventh rule of being a prince:

  
⚜

  
Atsumu lied. The night does not last for the five nights he promises him in the quiet humming darkness, waltzing him down the silver staircase of the hours. The ballroom shines with moonlight, smeared soft as the skin of a peach. Light cascades in rivers upon their heads, collecting behind their ears, promising the secret of youth to their skin.

“Your highness.” Atsumu says, his brow pinched. “You are staring.”

Shouyou wonders idly if he is too tired to feel his feet, or if he is, perhaps, already asleep. He smiles at him, lopsided. “I was just thinking.”

“Mm?”

“I should have run you through with my sword that day.”

Atsumu stops looking for stars for long enough to snort.

“Because now you’re here,” they move south, carving a clean trajectory across the floor. “And now I’m here.” Everything Atsumu says is a convenient obfuscation of the truth. He lies; of course he does. He’s a dancer. Of course he is. “And you know, Atsumu, I think I might be in danger.” It is Shouyou’s turn to look away. You never know with these things. You never know what you might see if you pry your heart out of your chest, and hold it out across the water.

“You see,” he says, laying it bare on the ballroom floor. All the things he was taught to keep bottled up, all the bottles he crushed between his teeth. All the hurt and confusion and fear, and all the fear, and all the wanting. That too.

“I never wanted to dance with anyone, until I met you.”

It’s alarming how fast the body accustoms itself to a perceived sense of safety, no matter how false, no matter how temporary. What happens when this is over? Will they go back to their old routines, those half-conversations and those smiles in the gray light? What would Atsumu say to the bodies on the floor?

Panic begins to build in his chest, like a wave rushing towards the coast: slow, at first, then faster, louder, horror clawing its way down his throat with a grapple hook. Things begin to fall apart in his carefully-arranged interior. Already, they have reached the end of the vast and endless valley of magic. It is time for them to go home. He pulls away. He untangles their fingers and shakes off the hand at his waist.

Never before has the act of letting go felt so much like violence. But some violence is necessary. Some things are justified, like frustration, or annoyance, or anger. Shouyou expects him to put his pretty hands in his pretty pockets and stare at him, disgust leaking from between his teeth. He expects disappointment. If Atsumu came from the mouth of a dragon whose name he doesn’t know, then it makes sense, at some point, for him to leave.

But he doesn’t. He just stays there, head against the wall, earring bright as Jupiter. His hands clasped loosely in front of him. His lip between his teeth, his face between two lines of moonlight.

“Shouyou,” he says.

If there is a hell, it must be close to this place. If there is a heaven, surely it is just on the other side of the mountain, just waiting for him to walk towards it. Atsumu’s hair is loose, falling over his eyes. His expression is. Sad? Hesitant? Shouyou cannot read this, even though he could have sworn, minutes and hours ago, that he knew the names of all his household gods.

The window is cold, the glass bare. Shouyou’s heart is beating so fast, he wonders, momentarily, if it is broken.

If he has to leave, he can do it. If he wants to run, he just has to take that first step back. He can go anywhere he wants, except home. Except back to the beginning, to that first day in the snow.

“What?”

Atsumu’s voice is the salt at the bottom of the sea.

“I never wanted anything at all, Shouyou, until I met you.”

  
⚜

  
Shouyou wants to be a bird. He wants to be one of those, what do you call it, angels, or cherubs, or whatever. He is backing away as fast as he can, having been confronted with the vast and terrifying reality that he is not, in fact, acting out a segment from a dream. And Atsumu has remembered he is a terrible person. Atsumu is walking towards him like any good old wolf at the Spring Ball, his shoulders squared, his teeth white and polite in the moonlight.

“So,” he says, half-bashful, half-sly, altogether very cute. “What now?”

He sounds like he has got his head up his ass, which is standard issue Atsumu, but his footsteps are wavering, so perhaps he is vastly terrified too, but too proud to show it. Perhaps they have both overstepped their boundaries. The night is almost over. Any longer, and they will have overstayed their welcome.

Shouyou hiccups a little laugh. “Nothing?” He has one hand on the wall as he walks backwards. He has regrets. “We go back to our respective quarters and I keep acting like I didn’t say anything cheesy and horrible, and you keep letting me win.”

Atsumu frowns. “I don’t like that. You have to take responsibility for this.”

Shouyou sticks out his tongue at him. “I don’t take responsibility for anything. You applied for the job. The king hired you. I just happened to be there.”

“The you that ‘just happened to be there’ did this to me.”

“It’s your fault for letting it happen.”

He tries to take another step back, but the heel of his foot comes up short. Behind him is the staircase, draped in red carpet; before him is Atsumu, looking lovely and dead and a little pained, like he’s been stabbed. Shit. Shit shit fuck. He’s trapped.

Shouyou takes two steps up. His knuckles are white where he’s gripping the railing and his back is to the stairs, his eyes glued to Atsumu’s pale, moonlit expression. If he reaches down with his hand, his fingers might just brush along the side of his face. If he lets him come any closer.

Atsumu looks up at him earnestly. “Well, if you ask me, it’s your fault for being so beautiful.”

This is the point where the prince decides he has had enough of the mean, childish teasing of the evil magician. Though Atsumu is no magician, though all he has to show for himself is a sword, an earring, and a smile that makes you want to press him into the wall. This is the point at which the prince runs up the stairs and leaves behind a single shoe. A single shoelace. A parting statement, like ‘this is where I live’, or ‘fuck’, or ‘fuck you’.

This is where I live. Fuck. Fuck you. Shouyou takes another step back, his throat dry and his eyes dry and everything in his body caterwauling about love, and life, and loneliness. And then he falls.

  
⚜

  
Three hours ago, Shouyou had stood behind the curtains that separated him from the ballroom below, worrying a thick golden braid between his fingers. He declared to Sakusa, sleep-deprived and delirious from the pressure, that he would never fall in love. He would never do wild and reckless things in the name of love. He did not believe in this ‘love’ thing to begin with; it seemed only to have turned his mother into a war memorial and his father into a madman. Having seen the devastating side-effects of having a heart, he had resigned himself to a life without it.

Now, he hovers over Atsumu on the floor of the ballroom, spluttering an apology as he laughs up at him, his expression half-obscured by Shouyou’s shadow. He had been too stupid to look back. Atsumu had been too stupid to step away. Now Shouyou is sitting on his torso like a horrible, overgrown house cat, his knees weak, his arms weak, his conscience broken.

He thinks that in his last life, he may have been a clown. He thinks that he wants to die.

“I’m sorry,” Shouyou mumbles again. He desperately wants to hide his face in his hands, or at least the shoulder of his coat, but when he tries to do so Atsumu bats his hand gently aside. He props himself up on an elbow, closing the distance between them.

“Your highness,” he says roughly. His voice is not delicate or lovely or sweet. It sounds like it’s been put through a cheese grater, and the cheese grater has been put through a larger cheese grater, and then that cheese grater was thrown in the moat. “Your highness,” he repeats, like a fool, like maybe he can barely think straight in all this dizzy darkness, too.

Shouyou’s face is red. He knows this without having to be told, just like how he knows his face is scrunched up from embarrassment and his hands on Atsumu’s chest are trembling. But the redness, he cannot hide. The redness will give him away.

“It’s not ‘your highness.’”

“Ah. I’m sorry.” Atsumu brushes the hair out of his eyes. “Shouyou, right?” He nods to himself seriously. “Shouyou. Yes, Shouyou. Hinata Shouyou of Solis, professional prince, amateur swordsma—”

Shouyou glares at him.

“—or maybe not. Maybe a professional swordsman as well. Maybe a professional dancer. A professionally charming—”

He stops talking. Shouyou has grabbed him by the collar of his coat and yanked him off the ground and now he’s just sitting in his goddamn lap, this should be embarrassing, this should be the worst thing he’s done in his life.

But Atsumu is red, too. He opens his mouth. He closes it. He opens it again. A series of complex and multilayered thoughts seems to run through his mind while he stares dumbly at Shouyou, his eyes wide, his eyes wide enough to make oceans out of.

Olive irises, cattish smile, hair the color of sandpaper. Is this the one you asked for, that day under the stars? Was this what you meant, when you said you didn’t want to be lonely anymore?

Shouyou pulls him closer, his fingers still hooked under his collar. He frames Atsumu’s face with his hands. This boy is one of the crown prince’s people, he thinks distantly, not really breathing, not really here at all. This boy is mine.

“Atsumu,” he says quietly.

Atsumu’s hand comes up, slowly, to the side of his face. The moon has been nudged out of hiding. She is a centerpiece in the ceiling of the sky.

“Mm?”

So here he has a thought. The thought is complex and multilayered, and probably shaped like a cheese grater. On one side is the boy who’s like ‘I don’t know how to be loved. I cannot deal with it. It scares me’. On the other side is the boy who’s been ground up by the cheese grinder, who is in pieces, or slices, or strips, depending on who you ask. On the other side is the boy who’s decided he’s had enough of falling off silver staircases.

This boy takes after his mother. This boy takes after his father. This boy has been thinking about Miya Atsumu’s teeth for months, now, like a chicken dreams of the meaning of life, though it has taken him just as long to realize it. So he leans in, and he leans in, and he says:

“I’m going to kiss you.”

Atsumu tucks a strand of hair behind his ear, very tenderly, like something he is trying not to break. “Is that an order?”

“No.” Shouyou swallows dust and air and moonlight. “It’s a question.” He watches Atsumu’s face carefully. He knows what rejection looks like. He knows what it’s like to be unwanted.

So the fact that he is here at all, that he has chosen to let himself walk this far out on the wooden plank, while beneath him the ocean licks hungrily up the sides of the ship; this fact is dangerous. Once again, he has taken too many steps. Once again, it is too late to turn back.

Atsumu doesn’t flinch. Shouyou chews the inside of his mouth.

“And your answer?”

“My answer is I’m going to kiss you first,” Atsumu says seriously, and his head really is up his ass all the time, Shouyou thinks, it must be stuck there, because he’s still trying to get a rise out of him when Shouyou leans in, quiet as rain, and kisses him. Then he stops laughing, because holy shit, Hinata Shouyou is kissing him. Hinata Shouyou is sitting in his lap, and Hinata Shouyou is kissing him. Atsumu kisses him back, chastely at first, then with teeth and tongue and the rest of his marionette’s heart, and Shouyou’s never kissed anyone before, Shouyou’s never sat in the dark and dragged his hands through someone’s hair while the world burned behind his eyelids, but he had not imagined that it would be this much like walking through fire. Atsumu leans forward and brings his free hand to the small of Shouyou’s waist. Shouyou allows himself to be tipped back, exposing the column of his neck. He’s never wanted someone so badly before. But then and again, he’s never really wanted anything.

This is it, he thinks through the flurry of stars in his head. Nineteen years spent waiting for something to fall from the sky. Nineteen years of fire. Nineteen years spent looking for this one, indescribable shade of sky your mother told you about one day, when you were barely old enough to remember what she looked like, and then six months spent staring at your reflection in the mirror, only for you to turn around, and find that what you had been looking for had been right here all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [now that you have seen this chapter please look at june's work. it singlehandedly fueled 95% of this collab](https://twitter.com/atsuhinas/status/1279490186443763712)


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [happiness is a butterfly](https://open.spotify.com/track/3lG6OtGDsYAOALxEmubQQm?si=F3UN46lTSfyWotnIUWxNXg)

The first time he set one of the horses free from the palace stables, Osamu laughed at him. It was a horse that did not turn heads, who galloped at a slower pace than the others, and was not particularly amicable to human contact. His parents commented that Atsumu had perhaps done the horse an act of charity, as it was now free to roam wherever it wished, but Osamu laughed at him, so it didn’t matter. Atsumu had not meant to set the horse free. The significance of his mistake would not be reduced by whatever happened afterwards.

He found out, much later, that the horse did in fact go on to discover the secret to whatever had been slowing it down for all its life. It became a racehorse, fast, sleek, and powerful. It was sought-after by kingdoms across the region and made a name for itself, transporting prisoners, and royalty, and dead men.

He was relieved to hear this. He had never really forgiven himself for letting it go. Though their paths had diverged, at least one of them had come out of the last ten years with something to show for it. The horse, whose name was now Ten, which means sky, which means ceiling of the universe, had built a new livelihood for itself. Atsumu, on the other hand, was traveling from city to city on a peasant’s budget, living a peasant’s lifestyle and hunting pheasants in exchange for a meal or two from a rich, passing merchant. He was eighteen. He had just left his legal guardian, Kita, behind in one of the valley nations, along with half of his money and almost everything he owned. He had also left half of his conscience behind. All he had now was the clothes on his back, his old sheepskin satchel, and the sword he had taken from the throne room on his way out of the castle, which he barely considered his.

People who were not particularly amicable towards living tended to behave like this. But if you asked him, he would deny it. He was not looking for a place to die.

The first time Miya Atsumu saw Hinata Shouyou was not, in fact, when Hinata tried to stab him through the heart with his sword, though if you asked him, he would say that it was. If you asked him what his first impression of the prince was, he would say he looked elegant. Stately. Dangerous, like if you happened to get on his wrong side, he would stab you through the heart with his sword. He would then bring up his first formal encounter with the prince in demonstration of this fact, and smile at you.

That would be a lie. The first rule of being a prince is to not ask questions you won’t get answers to, so why are you asking him at all? What do you want from Miya Atsumu? Are you expecting him to tell you about the earlier thing? It doesn’t really matter. You’re wasting your breath.

Okay, fine. When he was five he set one of the horses free and it’s haunted him ever since. When he was sixteen he killed his first man, a rogue soldier who had gone half-mad with bloodlust, by creeping into their cabin while they were asleep and slitting his neck. When he was twenty he applied for the position of royal sword instructor, and when the attendants weren’t looking, he snuck away.

Solis’s castle was both larger and older than expected. He had heard the stories of the old king. He knew that Hiroto the Vanquisher was no longer a destroyer as much as he was a dead man walking, and had sunk into complacency since his glory years had passed. And yet the castle, itself, seemed intact. It seemed almost hollow. As if it were hiding something.

Consumed with polite curiosity, he resolved to open every door that he could. He climbed through every window that he could wrench open, and ran his hands along each wall that he passed by. At the end of the afternoon, having dodged enough guards and attendants and tall, sour-faced men with curly black hair to be wary even of the shadows his own feet left on the floor, he arrived at the room at the end of the hallway. He was several meters away from the library, though he did not know this. He was about to step into the prince’s private study room, though he did not know this, either.

Atsumu turned the knob, careful not to make a sound, and pushed the door open. He was not sure what to expect, but he hoped that it would be useful. Perhaps he would find the palace records. Then he would have something to bring back with him, before the mission had begun at all. Perhaps he would find the wine cellar.

Instead, he found a boy. He was sitting by the window, his head against the glass, one leg on the ledge while the other brushed against the floor. He did not look like any of the other boys Atsumu had seen, running hastily across the courtyard or yelling crossly at a hippogriff or sashaying gaudily around the corner. He looked, in a strange twist of events, like Atsumu. With the same bright eyes and the same unsteady gaze, the same disquieting air of loss.

Had he lost something? Had they all?

The boy wore a starched white shirt with rows of gold soutache, secured at the collar with a jewel. A red and gold sash ran across his chest. Draped across one shoulder was a red cloak with a fur trim, while the other, exposed to the light, was adorned with epaulettes. His hair was the color of fire. It rustled as he reached up with a gloved hand to tuck a strand behind his ear. For a moment Atsumu could neither breathe nor blink, for fear that the sound of his lungs deflating would disturb the strange, melancholy equilibrium in the room.

The boy stared out the window with a strange, distant expression. His eyes were soft, his lashes golden in the sunlight. The boy was a statue poured from gold, something precious, something even the heavens would be jealous of. It hurt to look at him, the way Atsumu felt moths must feel when presented with the threat of death. And yet the more the pain grew, the more Atsumu felt that it must have been here all along.He looked both indelibly soft and indelibly cruel at once. He looked like a story.

Atsumu let out the smallest of breaths. The boy flinched, his hand moving immediately to the pocket of his pants.

The spell had been broken. He had felt the presence of another in the room, perhaps someone standing in the doorway, perhaps someone knocking from just beyond it. He turned to look at the exit, the large, gleaming door outside of which lay the rest of his life, and all the horrible things that awaited him. He did not want to leave his study. When he did, Sakusa would confront him with the calligraphy he had not yet finished, and then there would be paperwork, and meetings, and discussions to be had about the Spring Ball, he was hoping against all hopes would be cancelled. Whoever had intruded on his privacy was in for a treat. Shouyou would make sure their house burned down in a freak fire. He would make them see hell.

But by then, Atsumu had long since vanished. He had shut the door, less carefully this time, letting the knob turn back by itself, and then run down the hallway, down the steps, across the drawbridge that led to the surrounding forest. The image of the boy with the sun in his skin was burnt into his mind, the way iron leaves a brand or magic leaves a mark on your palms that you will carry forever. No matter how hard he tried, he could not get it out. Hinata Shouyou’s vacant, distant pain had wounded him much like how his father had wounded Atsumu’s family.

In another world, he might find this something worth laughing about. In this one, he was thinking about the horse he had set free all those years ago, and how sometimes the people you come back to kill end up haunting you in terrible, unexpected ways. All things left behind catch up to you eventually, regardless of whether you are prepared to receive them.

  
⚜

  
The thing about being Miya Atsumu is, you’re never really anyone. No one remembers where you came from, so no one can say you’re real. Maybe you aren’t. Who knows? Not you.

  
⚜

  
In the days following the Ball, he spends most of his time in the secret passageways. He does not have much of an agenda. He knows that he should, and that if he wishes to then the old agenda is waiting for him to return at any moment. He came to this castle for a reason. He befriended the prince for a reason.

But right now, he has nothing. He has given half of his conscience away to the gods. Now, every time he stares into a shiny patch of wall, water, or sky, he finds a marionette looking back. Who are you, this other him asks, their voice thick and indistinct. What are you doing?

That is the question, he thinks emptily. His boots send up plumes of dust as he walks slowly down the hallway, one hand fisted around the handle of a candle holder, the other in his pocket. It has been three days since the Ball. He hasn’t seen Shouyou since. He hasn’t seen Sakusa, or Hoshiumi, or Oikawa and his dangly earrings. This is the first problem. This problem is mostly bearable, somewhat concerning, but an altogether manageable affair.

The other problem, therein, lies in the fact that every time he allows his thoughts to wander for even a sliver of a second, they return to this:

Shouyou, his eyes full of moonlight, his skin full of stars. His lips kiss-bitten, his hands burning. Shouyou laughing into the crook of Atsumu’s neck, draped across him like a particularly lovely rose, whispering something against his skin.

Tell you a secret, Atsumu. The king wants me to choose someone. As a suitor. As a candidate for marriage.

Tell you a secret, ‘Tsumu. I’m gonna tell him it’s you.

This is the third problem. The king will never agree to this. An arrangement like that is built on truth, and Atsumu has declined to reveal his at every possible juncture. They think he is good with a sword because he likes to swing a sword around. Technically, this is not a lie. Technically, Atsumu picked up a sword because he liked the heft of it in his hand.

The other half of it is much more complicated. Then and again, Atsumu thinks, kneeling in a room that’s barely the size of a broom closet, they all have their vices. The circumstances of his own birth determined that he would grow up pampered and gratuitously proud, and then have the rug pulled out from under his feet before he learned to develop a conscience. He could not have foreseen that, and for the hubris of assuming that happiness was a god-given right, several demons have been left in his closet like a gift. On a good day, there are maybe five. On a bad day, there are thousands of them, and they flood the hallways of the castle as he walks through them, his head held just above the water.

There are markings on the floor. He brushes the dirt and dust aside, feeling for something he can grab. He pries a square stone panel away. Underneath it is a small opening, barely large enough to fit a dinner plate, or a head.

Atsumu lifts a secret out of this tiny space hidden in a tiny room, hidden in an old secret he was never supposed to have known about. He blows dust off its cover, and flips the pages open with a hand curved carelessly around its spine.

He is about to discover something that even Sakusa Kiyoomi and his vipers do not know. But shh. No one tell him that. No one tell him what he has done.

  
⚜

  
There’s a reason Hinata Shouyou doesn’t remember being eight or nine or ten. There are, in fact, twenty-seven reasons. And for each reason there is one dead mage, and for each dead mage another was hired to replace them, and for each dead mage there is another gap in Hinata Shouyou’s memory, and for each gap in his memory his father wakes up in the morning and clothes himself in silk and gold and memory, then walks out of the door with a big, weak smile, and a big, weak heart.

  
⚜

  
“OIKAWA TOORU.”

“Is not here,” says Oikawa Tooru, who is here. He is clearly lying. He is reclining on a red velvet sofa and popping grapes into his mouth with one hand. The other rests lazily on the revolving jewel of his staff, which is propped against the side of the sofa. “How did you get up here?” He reaches for the silver platter on the table.

“I found the—” Atsumu says, then stops. Oikawa Tooru does not feel like the enemy. But then and again, none of the people who have tried to take Atsumu’s head off over the years have felt like enemies, only mildly amicable strangers. If he says too much, Oikawa may change his mind at a later date, sneak into his quarters, and kill him.

Oikawa pops another grape into his mouth. “I’m not going to kill you.”

“How do I know that?”

“Because,” Oikawa drawls, managing to sound both incredibly punchable and incredibly bored at the same time. “I could have killed any of you, a long time ago, if I felt like it. And I haven’t.”

He offers a close-lipped smile. “The logic is sound, no?”

Atsumu resists the urge to say no.

Oikawa gestures for him to sit down on the other armchair. Atsumu ignores him. Oikawa gestures for him to do so again, this time with menace. His entourage of white butterflies flashes hot pink for the briefest of moments, and Atsumu feels his stomach flip.

He sits down. Several seconds pass in silence. Around them, the scenery in the mage’s weird hideout warps and unwarps itself every two-to-seventeen seconds, morphing from the deep green of the eastern hills into the wet concrete of Dateko’s cities. Being inside of this room feels more like one is, in fact, outside of the castle altogether; the sensation is disorienting. It is likely another ploy by Oikawa and his mages to confuse their visitors. To make them easier to put away.

“I don’t like you,” Atsumu says, puncturing the quiet with the hard edge of his voice. His hands are balled into fists in his lap, the line of his shoulders tense. He says this with the full knowledge that if he has walked into the den of the lion, he will not be walking out with anything intact. If he has made a single incorrect guess about Oikawa Tooru, then his part of the story will be over, before he has even made the first move.

“But I need to know this.” Oikawa’s butterfly entourage has gone oddly still. Each one hovers at a set distance above the ground, like the elements of a painting. One by his ear, one by his shoulder. One near the distracting, bright crystal atop his staff.

Atsumu leans forward, only a little scared to death. “Were you the court mage who did that to him?”

A pause. Then Oikawa pushes himself off the sofa with all the leisurely grace of a lion padding around in the safety of its own den. He straightens his back as he sits down between two plush cushions, one long leg crossed over the other. The glittering fabric of his clothes shifts to accommodate this, draping itself in new and profound ways around his shoulders.

At this moment, Oikawa looks old enough to be the son of a nameless god. As if he had risen out of some crack in the ground on a fine, sunless day a thousand years ago, and accidentally acquired the shape of man. Like this, Atsumu trusts him even less, and fears him a little more.

“Dearest liar boy,” Oikawa says dryly. “I have done nothing for our prince except the absolute best to ensure his happiness.” He reaches for another grape. “To insinuate otherwise would be to insinuate that I am evil.” He pops the grape in his mouth. He chews, taking his time chewing, his gaze dragging itself across Atsumu’s skin like it wants to leave a mark. The walls of the castle within the castle he has built for himself begin to flicker faster, reflecting skies Atsumu doesn’t know, places he’s never been.

Oikawa swallows primly. “And who are you to call me evil, when you are,” he gestures at Atsumu with one arm. “The person that you are today?”

That’s a sore spot. That’s sore. Very, very sore.

Atsumu rises to his feet, his chest burning, reaching across the coffee table for Oikawa’s neck. But Oikawa had been anticipating this. He is there to receive the blow, wrapping his pretty pianist’s fingers around Atsumu’s trembling fist. He lowers it, effortlessly, to the side.

“What the fuck do you know about me,” Atsumu snarls.

Oikawa had been anticipating this as well. Oikawa anticipates all major events in the world, be they good or bad or somewhere in between, somewhere unreadable. He is not afraid; he never is. But he is entertained. If Atsumu is to be low and fast and dangerous, then let Oikawa be high and languid and soft as the skin of a peach. Let Oikawa be the one to oversee the second unraveling of Hinata Shouyou, this time at the hands of a boy from a country far from here, who has pitched the cosmos into his eyes, though he is not yet aware of this, though he has not yet gotten this far. 

  
⚜

  
Many things happened to Hinata Shouyou between the ages of eight and ten. Most of them are recorded in the hidden archives, which only the most senior members of the librarian’s guild have access to. The diary you found in the secret tunnels was not included in this roster.

Now, it was common knowledge that the prince had been searching for those records— do not give me that look, do not act as if I have lied to you. Mages do not tell lies, it does not benefit us. Most of us were aware that the prince had been trying to approach the truth, and that at some point you began to help. But we also knew that he would not succeed.

Again, dearest Atsumu, we did not hide anything from him. We were just as conflicted. Should we tell him what he wanted to know, or should we tell him what we thought he wanted to know? We were worried that the truth would break him. He had grown up surrounded by so much instability, what with his mother’s passing and his father’s rampage. We did not want to add to his burden.

But if you must know, Atsumu, then yes: the gloves are a lie. The tattoos are a lie. I was not the mage who cast those spells, after all, because I refused. They are the same spells that were cast on my palms, only mine were cast properly. I could have destroyed the world twice over if not for what the old king did to me. It was my foolishness that trapped me here.

Shouyou is different. The mage who spelled his powers away did a dreadful job of it. At first the effects could be felt, so we thought he had succeeded. But later, I noticed that the restraints were no longer in place. They had come loose, and by their admission, Shouyou’s powers were once again free to rampage as they wished.

Of course, his father noticed this as well. And what do you think he did? Quiz time: what happens when your beloved wife passes on and you are left to rule a kingdom, with no one but a bratty seven-year-old, with enough power to kill god, and his infant sister for a family? Write your answer in the air with your finger. Do not worry. I will be able to read it.

Your time is up. What have you written? I see that you have written an excellent response. It takes a murderer to know a murderer, Atsumu. Though it pains me to inform you of this, for the first time in all of your months here, you are correct.

  
⚜

  
Two truths and a lie:

One. Miya Atsumu is in love with the prince. Perhaps he has been in love with him since the day they sewed his arm back together. Or perhaps it began later, when the prince sat across from him and wound tape around his fingers, his nose scrunched up in concentration. Or perhaps it began from the very first moment in which he laid eyes on him in his study, and his first thought was not _if he sees me I’m dead_ but rather _I wonder what scares him. I wonder how he sounds when he laughs. I wonder what his hair would feel like if I touched it, if he let me get that close._ Regardless, he knows now. He knows it all too well. Everywhere he goes in the castle, he feels the ghost of the prince around him, and finds himself wanting for those hands, that face. Yet Atsumu is avoiding him. It has been two weeks now since he spoke to Oikawa, and the memory of the Ball has not left him. At night he dreams of teeth and skin and bright, sun-lit laughter. In the mornings he wakes up a mess, his demons spilling out of the closet, the closet caterwauling about death. The dissonance is killing him. To be honest, it is killing him.

Two. The morning after the Ball, the prince kissed him good night in the hallway, outside his quarters. His expression was soft and sleepy as he whispered that he liked Atsumu’s singing more than any of the choirs that had performed for him, so could he sing for him again, some day, some evening? He said he would come find him again soon. He said he missed him already. Atsumu suggested vaguely that he would go back to his own quarters, but instead he snuck out of the castle when Aone and Futakuchi’s horse cart rattled across the drawbridge, and stalked into the forest. He spent most of the morning walking, bristling a little, his eyes on the gaps in the trees. When he reached the agreed-upon place, he stopped. “I wasn’t informed of yesterday’s fire,” he said tersely. Someone stepped out from behind a tree. His shirt was old and gray, and his boots were scuffed. He was carrying a knife. “We didn’t think you needed to be informed,” said the man, studying Atsumu’s expression carefully. “Well, I think I did,” Atsumu replied. Something was wrong, though neither party could explain how they knew this. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

Three. Miya Atsumu is completely and utterly fucked. He knows this. But seriously.

  
⚜

  
An eye for an eye, an arm for an arm. Though I told the truth, didn’t I? I tried to. I told him as much as I could. I swear to god, I did.

  
⚜

  
Atsumu lied. He isn’t in his quarters when Shouyou sneaks out to find him in the evening. He isn’t in the great hall. Time passes like a ball down the stairs, and on Monday Shouyou sits under the shade of the sakura in the courtyard, waiting for him to emerge from the bottom of a staircase or walk out from behind a tree, complaining about the weather or the faces he had to put up with at breakfast. Time passes like a ball down the side of a waterfall, and Miya Atsumu does not appear. Sakusa says he hasn’t seen him since the morning after the Ball. Oikawa is simply missing altogether.

This is the first sign that something is wrong. The second sign is that, after Atsumu and Oikawa vanish, so does the king. For two weeks, the castle is run almost entirely by ghosts. Stable boys with nowhere to go. Chambermaids with no agenda. Royal cooks who bake mountains of spiced biscuits for Natsu, and then move on to mountains of spiced curry, and are unsure what else to do with their spare time. The schedule for the coming of age ceremony, which is due to take place in just two weeks, has not been released. There is no plan.

The castle shudders with a light cold. It breathes through lungs thick with congestion, and walks itself wearily to bed each night. Shouyou spends most of his time waiting in the eaves for something to happen, while overhead Sakusa steeps his sorrows in administrative mayhem, his anxiety tight around his wrists, keeping him bound to the wall. They have journeyed across the ocean for long enough, having lifted their anchors and thrown all their dead friends overboard. Something large and formless is emerging in the distance.

And still the fire does not go away. On better nights he dreams about dancing in a large, vacant ballroom and laughter that curls around his ears and tries to wring his neck. On the bad nights he relives the same set of images, the same strangled screaming, the same wall of flames that rises out of the earth like Goliath. In these dreams, he clamps his hands over his ears and tucks his chin into his chest. He pretends that he is a bird, passing by, passing overhead like a breeze. It all ends terribly anyway, and he wakes up a mess, his demons spilling out of the closet, the closet caterwauling about murder.

So when he hears a knock on his door and sees Atsumu standing in the doorway, his hands tucked behind his back, Shouyou’s first thought is not that Atsumu has been deliberately avoiding him for the last two weeks. It is not that Atsumu may have had a reason to avoid him for two weeks, and that he may be hiding something that might skin him alive. Instead, it is that the hour is not yet late, not by Shouyou’s standards anymore, and that the top button of Atsumu’s shirt is unbuttoned. It is all lovely and distracting, and the boy is gorgeous. The boy has always been gorgeous. But right now, more than ever, Shouyou needs the reminder about gorgeous rotting.

  
⚜

  
“Your highness. I have something I need to tell you.”

“Excellent.” He claps his hands together. “So do I.”

  
⚜

But they are different. Shouyou wants to know where Atsumu has been. He wants to tell him about the strange dreams he’s been having, the ones where the sun pitches sideways out of the sky and everything goes dark except for the palms of his own hands. He wants to kiss the line of his jaw, and brush the hair out of his eyes, and cut his chest open so he can crawl inside and sit there until summer comes, yawning through its teeth. The castle is talking in its sleep, but Shouyou knows what he can and cannot put his hands on. Atsumu has always straddled the line of that logic.

But Atsumu does not meet his gaze as Shouyou tugs him inside, and closes the door behind him. He stands, rigidly, by the side of the bed until Shouyou asks him to sit. Shouyou sits beside him, close enough to feel the tense line of his shoulder, and reaches out across what space is left between them.

Atsumu bites his lip. He looks away even as Shouyou touches the side of his face with a gloved hand, the dark fabric showing up like a bruise against his skin.

“I’m sorry,” he says flatly.

It’s almost funny, how all he has been doing lately is apologizing. I’m sorry about the arm, I’m sorry about the party. I’m sorry about the kiss, and the next one, and all the ones after. What will he pull out of the hat next? Shouyou clenches and unclenches his jaw. The air is cold.

The general consensus has always been that Miya Atsumu did not want to come to Solis. Even Shouyou knows this, happy as he has been to pretend that theirs is a simple web of relations. Since winter ended and spring returned to the castle, Atsumu has humored him.

Perhaps things change, then. Reluctance looks painful on him, like a corset pulled too tight around the heartstrings. His shoulders are hunched, like maybe the corset is a chain, and it is not just his heart that has been enshrined, but his body. He is barely breathing, even now, even in this room with the cream-colored walls.

There is a small carving of a snake on Shouyou’s desk. It was a gift from Sakusa. The carving was expensive, he remembers; each scale was carved meticulously out of white marble, the fangs in its open mouth chipped away at with the kind of care that would have broken most people. But it had not broken the artist Sakusa had purchased it from, so Sakusa had thought her respectable, and her work a respectable gift for the prince. Sakusa had always told him that trust was its own kind of strength.

Shouyou reaches for Atsumu’s face, touching the skin under his eye with his thumb. He studies him, as he imagines the court mages might examine a magical herb in the wild. The green, leather-bound first edition of Healing Herbs and Their Favorite Places can be found on the top shelf, five shelves over from the right, at the very back of the great library. It was once mistaken by Shouyou for a record of the events that transpired when he was between the ages of eight and ten. In a similar vein, the flower of the death camas is often mistaken for wild garlic. Only the results of doing the latter are much more sinister. There is, after all, no known cure for zygacine poisoning.

As predicted by the position of the stars in the sky, twelve years ago on the fine summer afternoon when Shouyou burned down a castle and Atsumu’s ghosts were branded into the backs of his eyelids, Atsumu pulls away. He swallows with visible effort, his hands twisted together in his lap. It looks painful. It looks painful to be him, and Shouyou feels pity for a moment, before pushing it away.

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” he says, knowing full well that Atsumu will correct him. He cannot undo the chain or the corset. He cannot undo twelve years of absence, when he has not been made privy to the details. But he can try. He wants to try. For the first time in a long time, there is something he wants to save from the fire.

Atsumu holds his head in his hands, his eyes on the floor, the floor rushing up to meet him. “Yes. Yes there is.” He exhales like a castle falling apart. He looks up with the kind of effort that men expend to end dynasties.

Two truths and a lie. Two truths. I love you. I would do anything for you. Now the lie. Now the unraveling of it, the grand reveal with the trumpets and the tambourine.

“Two weeks from now,” he says, holding Shouyou’s gaze like they’re both made of glass, like it’s the last kindness he can give him. “I’m supposed to kill you.”


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [the war](https://open.spotify.com/track/4SQ0ytpTP8v1Rx8FWR22cv?si=xj_cE8nTTa24UOOZ4hw4HA)

A long time ago, there was a boy. He lived happily with his family and all that stuff in a big, fancy castle. But one day someone decided that they wanted his family dead. So his parents told him to hide in the closet, and then they locked it from the outside. The boy sat in silence for a long time. The boy waited patiently to be let out. He waited, and he waited, and he waited. He waited until he was too thirsty and hungry to wait any longer, and finally broke out.

But by then, everyone in his family was already dead. His parents were dead. His cousins were dead. His fox, Kaoru, was dead, and his grandparents were dead, and his twin brother, who had jumped out of the closet to save him, was dead.

His twin brother had sacrificed himself and now he was dead. But Miya Atsumu of Canis was not.

He picked his way slowly out of the castle, moving from each room of mourning to the next with grim determination. For days and days he wandered along by the roadside, a walking ghost with a gold-trimmed tunic and bloody wrists, and people stared. People wondered what had happened to the royal family of Canis, and how they had fallen. By the time the news of The Vanquisher’s newest conquest reached the fringe cities, Atsumu had long since left it behind. It had been an unfortunate incident. Hiroto the Vanquisher had visited Canis, weeks ago, and while there one of his subjects had gotten into a complication with one of Canis’s nobles. The noble had died, and her family, bitter and miserable, insisted that the king send out a message in retaliation. So the king of Canis had demanded compensation, and then some terrible things happened, leaving Hiroto the Vanquisher with no choice but to retaliate. With force.

Kita Shinsuke explained all of this to Atsumu one morning, several days after he had found him lying face-down in a back alley, and brought him back to the land of the living. Kita Shinsuke was a healthy, robust man in his late twenties. He was a former member of the royal guard, but he had not been particularly good or bad at swinging his sword around, and so he had left. These days he traveled from city to city, taking on odd requests. Most of the time, his work involved clearing out an outcrop of cursed plants on someone’s roof, or fighting fire-breathing dragons. Occasionally, he would be asked to take lives, or give them back.

Atsumu started out under Kita’s tutelage. Then Kita fell under his tutelage, then Kita got bored of swinging his sword around, so Atsumu got to do most of the cutting up and cutting down, and most of the putting away of bodies.

So Atsumu got very good at killing people, and as the numbers and gold coins piled up, people got very excited about trying to kill him back. This delighted him. He relished every chance to get better at this thing which he was already good at, which he could hold up like a chalice or a threat. When people who weren’t supposed to die died, he simply shrugged with his hands up beside his head. It was an act of self-defense, he would say, echoing the words of the old king.

He never forgot about Solis. They often heard about Hiroto the Vanquisher’s conquests, from bartenders with silky voices and other swordsmen on the road. The incident in Canis was not an isolated one. It happened again, and again, and again. By the time Hiroto the Vanquisher sunk back into obscurity, he had destroyed twenty-seven versions of Canis, each time leaving the royal family for dead, each time leaving its people to either fend for themselves, or accept Solis’s governance. Atsumu had kept count.

When he was seventeen, he ran away. He left all of his money and belongings, taking only the clothes on his back, a few coins, and the sword he had taken from the old throne room, and slipped away early one morning. Kita did not worry about him so much as he worried for him. It was a selfish kind of worry, he knew. Atsumu would be fine. He would not die as easily as the scrawny, red-eyed nine-year-old he had picked up on the roadside all those years ago.

But the rest of him, Kita thought, was a different matter, and was right to believe so. Atsumu ran with mercenaries, bandits, all the sorts you typically wanted to avoid at the bar. He swung his sword with the same kind of reckless abandon he had possessed when he was fifteen, and still small enough that he did not have to duck to walk under most doorways. But something had changed. He was looking at something in the distance, even as he lived from moment to moment, sword at the ready, his sleeves in tatters.

One summer day when he was twenty, he bumped into a group with the same distant look. Their king was full of shit, they slurred over their drinks. He was a liar and a coward and he was full of shit. He had enacted twenty-seven royal conquests, several years ago, and yet in spite of all the treasure he had surfaced, Solis was falling apart.

“Hi,” Atsumu said, sliding into the empty seat beside them. “I heard you talking about a shitty king. I think I know which king you’re talking about, and I agree. He’s a shitty fucking king.”

“Well, we’re going to overthrow him,” said one of them. He tapped at his chin thoughtfully. “And his family. ‘Cos we don’t like ‘em.”

His friend slapped his arm. “Shut the fuck up, Zoa.”

Zoa shrugged. “If he tries anything, we’ll just kill him.”

Atsumu watched this unfold with round, childish eyes. He had not been in the presence of such visionaries for years, not since he was a prince in a flourishing kingdom, not since he was a proper half of a whole.

“Wait,” he said. “Don’t kill me. You probably can’t kill me.” He gestured at the hilt of his sword, and watched as six pairs of eyes followed the casual movement of his arm with sudden, lethal interest. He had caught their attention. The attention thrilled him.

Atsumu leaned in, smiling with all of his teeth. Twenty had never looked better on a person, and yet it had never looked more like the harbinger of death. He could feel the blood rushing to his head, eleven years of pent-up pain beginning to gnaw at his chest with renewed vigor. He was on the verge of something big, if he only took the right steps forward. If he marched in with the saints, if he bit the bullet, if he let the feeling wash his better conscience away.

“I’m good with a sword. I can prove it. Let me join you.”

“Huh. What do you mean?”

“I’m saying: I’ll help you kill your king.”

  
⚜

  
He told them everything. About Sakusa and his vipers and the flowers in the garden and the secret room behind the hippogriff statue and hippogriff number one and hippogriff number two and the dungeons beneath the castle and Lisa’s workshop beneath the castle and the pigeons in the rafters and the pigeons in the north tower and the network of secret passageways and the boy who grew up in them and he told them about his hands, the prince’s hands, he told them everything. He told them everything that Hinata Shouyou ever told him, in a moment of honesty or vulnerability or hope. He told it all.

  
⚜

  
Despite all the rumors he’s heard in the castle over the last six months, about mystique and murder and swordsmen that hail from faraway lands, Hinata Shouyou is disappointed to find that his sword instructor is, in fact, lying. He had been expecting more based on his repertoire, whose descriptions ranged from ‘shy, with a penchant for hiding his shortcomings’ to ‘attractive and full of atrocious pick-up lines’. His sword instructor does, indeed, have an endless supply of pick-up lines; he also has a single, recurring nightmare. It is long and horrible and deceptively plain-looking, and when Shouyou tried to ask him about it once, in the late-afternoon glow of the infirmary, he lied again. For that sole, unfortunate reason, Shouyou does not come to learn of the details of the nightmare until much later. His sword instructor does not smile about it, bland and diplomatic. He does not try to stab Shouyou back after stabbing him, the first time, with the truth. He does not do anything.

So imagine Shouyou’s surprise, when the sword instructor turned human that he kissed under the stars two weeks ago walks into his room, and sits on the side of his bed, and looks him dead in the eyes, looks him dead in the fucking eyes, and tells him he was sent here to kill him.

Imagine his surprise. Take a step back, peel your hands off the back of your head, watch the story unfold. This is Medusa’s head on a pike. Medusa’s head in the ocean.

  
⚜

  
“Is this a trick?”

Atsumu doesn’t respond. He doesn’t shake his head or roll his eyes or shrug a shoulder, or throw his head back and laugh, awkwardly, to hide his embarrassment.

“Is this.” Shouyou’s voice is so calm, he doesn’t recognize it. “A trick?”

He pulls his hand back, coiling it into the center of his chest. He stares at it absurdly. Whose limb is this; where did it come from? He digs his nails into the back of the hand. Hard enough to draw blood.

“Is this a fucking trick?”

Atsumu doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t say anything. The night yawns bright and horrible between them and Shouyou’s nails break past skin, drawing blood that soaks into the leather of his glove and Atsumu doesn’t say anything. His eyes are on Shouyou’s eyes. His leg is pressed to Shouyou’s leg.

An eye for an eye. An arm for an arm.

A trick of the light. A phantom sleeping in his bed. A collection of glyphs, carved into the walls of this castle; a collection of stories.

“Oh.” Shouyou exhales. “This isn’t a trick. You’re not joking. You haven’t gotten your head stuck so far up your ass, you think something like this would be funny.”

His chest is glitter and gore. His skull is the site of a dinner party. His hand tries to find its way to the front door, while its skin throbs, dully, blood congealing around the open wound.

“This isn’t a trick. You’re serious. You’re here to kill me.”

He has to stand up suddenly, so he does that. He moves away from the thigh-to-thigh and the knee-to-knee and backs up until he hits the opposite wall. The convoluted, fucked-up story about the boy and the boy and the convoluted, fucked-up dream of revenge burns in his veins, like a weak poison that wants to kill, but doesn’t know how.

Is Atsumu real? Is any of this real? If Shouyou tries to touch him, will his hand pass cleanly through the air, as if waving sunlight out of one’s shadow?

“You’re here to kill me,” he repeats, like if he says it enough times, it’ll stop being real. The word ‘here’ can mean a lot of things. It can mean this castle, or this kingdom. It can mean this room. The word ‘here’ can mean ‘you came here’, as in ‘you came here to spell me away’. ‘You came here to lie’. You came here on the promise of revenge, and you fell off the beaten track, and now you’re—

Here. He’s here. He’s not.

“Yes.” Atsumu turns his head to the side.

Shouyou blinks. “You’re here to kill the king.”

“Yes.”

“You’re here to kill Sakusa, and Oikawa, and Kageyama.”

“Yes.”

“Tsukishima.”

“Yes.”

“Hoshiumi.”

“Yes.”

Shouyou stares at him blankly. “Natsu.”

“Ye—” In spite of himself, in spite of what he’s just said, in spite of everything he hasn’t denied and has instead accepted like gospel, Atsumu’s voice breaks. “No.” He stands up. “No, I wasn’t going to kill the princess. I was never going to kill a child, or the stable boys, or Riko, the chambermaid, or any of the cooks, I—” Shouyou presses himself against the wall like if he does it hard enough, he will sink into the stone. Atsumu’s face is white, white as snow, white enough to put your dirty hands on and fuck right up.

“I wasn’t going to kill anyone I didn’t have to,” he says, so raw you can feel the fibers of his heart in each word. “If I could. I wasn’t going to kill anyone.”

Shouyou laughs derisively. “Is that what you were thinking when you joined an anti-royal insurgency group? Were you thinking ‘let’s do this the pacifist way, let’s change their minds’ when you walked up to them in that bar, and you said ‘let me join you’?” His voice is climbing higher and higher, his chest is collapsing, the room is spinning like a top, spinning towards the edge of the table, spinning towards a dark and faceless abyss at the bottom of which Hinata Shouyou professes, he can see absolutely nothing.

“I trusted you,” he says, glimmering, the glitter turned to blood and the gore turned to cruelty. “I trusted you, more than anyone in this stupid castle. And all you gave me was bullshit.”

His knees give way and he slides down the wall, still laughing with reckless abandon as if laughter will save any of them now, but Atsumu’s in front of him in the blink of an eye, dragging him up by the front of his shirt, and Shouyou didn’t want to be touched by a murderer, Shouyou never asked to be caught up in all this, but he’s here, Atsumu’s mad, haha, Shouyou’s fucked up again. Atsumu’s really, really mad. Which is funny, because shouldn’t Shouyou be the mad one here? Shouldn’t he be the one who’s sorry?

“Like you’re one to talk,” Atsumu snarls, eyes wild, spittle flying. “Like you’re not the sick fuck with three years of his life carved out of his head like a horse that’s missing a leg.” His grip on Shouyou’s collar is so tight, he begins to see the solar system at the edges of his vision.  
“What do you think your father was doing while you were daydreaming about sheep? Do you honestly think it was a coincidence that he just happened to go off fucking up all those kingdoms during those same three years?”

Shouyou sees red. “What the hell are you talking about,” he snarls back, leaning into Atsumu’s grip. The solar system retreats and Shouyou sees green, blue, purple as deep as twilight. “What do you know about my father?” The blood is rushing to his head now, everything is sparking, Atsumu’s face is growing uglier by the minute like someone’s reflection, distorted in the water, and Shouyou feels sick to his stomach. He feels disgusting.

In a moment of clarity, amidst all the yelling and the spitting and the sea of ugly, screeching red, he looks inside of himself, and realizes he feels hurt.

But Atsumu is not thinking about the hurt. Atsumu is scared and ashamed and guilty, and above all, above all else in this moment, Atsumu is disgusted. With himself. He swallows with visible effort as Shouyou fists his hands in the front of his coat, his expression splintering like glass. “More than you do,” he spits out. “I know more than you, and I’ve been here for six months. What the fuck have you been doing for the last nineteen years?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Shouyou leans up on tip-toes, the hurt taking a backseat to the sharp stinging edge of anger. “Maybe I was busy being the crown prince of a fucking kingdom?”

“And you think I wasn’t?”

“I’m not responsible for what my father did.”

Atsumu leans in even closer. Shouyou can feel his breath on his face, and it’s not pleasant, it’s awful, everything about this is awful.

“Is that so?”

Shouyou is exhausted. He wants nothing more than to shove his head under a pillow and sleep until this dynasty ends, past the ceremony and the fighting and the disappointment, the disappointment of being here. But that’s not what a good prince would do, and Hinata Shouyou isn’t just a good prince. He’s the only one this kingdom has.

“Miya Atsumu,” he says, caustic and miserable all at once, like if he doesn’t try to fix something then everything will fall apart. “Please, please, please tell me what you know about my father.”

Apparently, this is what Atsumu wanted to hear. He should have started with this, but then and again, no one expects the boy they kissed under the stars last week to come into their quarters and tell them they were sent here to kill them. Atsumu moves half an inch away.

“I know he’s a monster who thought ten kingdoms wasn’t enough, so he went for fifteen. Then he thought fifteen kingdoms wasn’t enough, so he went for twenty. Twenty five. Twenty seven. I know that somewhere along the way, my family died, and it was his fault. And that somewhere in there there was this creepy fucking kid in a huge black cloak and that every time he held up his hands, everything went to hell.”

“I know that nobody in this castle really likes him or agrees with him, but they’ve tolerated him all the same. And I know my family is dead. I was supposed,” he pauses to breathe, and it’s funny, he’s the one who’s here to do the lying and the burning and the killing, but he sounds like he’s on the verge of tears.

“I was supposed to be a twin.”

There were two boys in the closet. Remember?

Shouyou isn’t laughing anymore. Atsumu lets go of his shirt. He stumbles backwards; left foot, right, left.

“You’re not the only one with a sob story, your fucking _highness.”_ He walks off on stage left. “I’m. I’m going to get some air.”

Shouyou watches him go, walking listlessly past the bed, the wardrobe, the large, gold-spun tapestry hanging near the window. He pushes the balcony doors open. He takes one, two, three steps into the moonlit darkness, swaying slightly from left to right, not once looking up, not once looking back at Shouyou, who is still staring at him from beyond the warm yellow room, and when he reaches the parapet. When he reaches the parapet. Miya Atsumu reaches the parapet.

  
⚜

  
“ATSUMU—” 

  
⚜

  
In short, he looks like he’s dying. His back is to the parapet and his head is bowed, his breaths coming in stutters as Shouyou tries to push him up by the shoulders, tries to get a look at his face, and he’s dying. He doesn’t need a book of medicine to know this. How long had this been going on for? How did he not notice?

“Atsumu,” he says. Then, more frantically. “Atsumu. _Atsumu.”_

No response. The sound of taut, panicked breathing. Every breath he sucks in seems to catch in his chest, blackening the insides of his lungs like tar.

“Fuck.”

Shouyou kneels between his legs. He frames his face with his hands and forces him to look at him. Atsumu’s eyes are bright and wild, partially real, mostly unseeing. He’s shaking, like an earthquake without a center.

“Atsumu,” Shouyou repeats, feeling his body sinking into the floor like a weight. “You need to tell me what’s wrong.”

For a moment, there’s no response. He’s prepared to run for Oikawa and drag him, kicking and screaming, all the way back to his quarters, and he tenses, preparing to do so, but then Atsumu’s eyes refocus. He looks terrified.

“Oh,” he says like he hasn’t just collapsed after punching the heart out of a boy. He laughs with a shaky, manic edge. “I’m cornered.”

Shouyou thinks, vaguely, that he might cry. Atsumu’s chest is still heaving, his expression an elaborate, half-hidden patchwork of pain. His hands make a sound as they scrabble against the front of his coat, as if trying to rip it open.

“No shit.” Shouyou bites back his worry. There is so much. This moment is so much. No amount of formal schooling ever prepared him to deal with boys with jewels for teeth, who try to fucking die on him. “Stop talking.”

“Your highness, if I stop, I don’t know if I’ll be able to start again.”

Spring is cold, strange, and unassuming, like a friend who has left for too long to be remembered in full. They have played the child’s game, and lost it, and now Atsumu is lying on the floor of his balcony with his heart out. His heart on the ground. Shouyou has never forgotten anger so fast, he has never felt panic so wrong. He presses his hands to Atsumu’s hands on his coat, stilling them.

“Atsumu,” he says, for the fifth, tenth, thousandth time. “You need to tell me what to do. I can’t help you like this.”

Atsumu is scared out of his mind. He has been scared out of his mind since he knocked on Shouyou’s door, only earlier he had been hiding it, had been hiding the war and the knives and the nightmares, because it seemed easier that way. Because he has been taught that honesty means vulnerability. Because vulnerability means death.

Fuck that. Either way, it still got him here.

He inhales, and it’s knives and fire all over again. The world swims. The world does breaststroke across a tranquil lake in the middle of a forest, within which the koi fish are swimming lazily, their scales eating the sunlight in pieces. God, fuck. If he dies right now, then it’s over. The dream of the king’s head on a pike, but the dream of his son, too. The prince in a glass casket of moonlight; the prince in a picture-frame of happiness.

Tell me what to do.

He hates how desperate he sounds when he replies, though honestly, these days, he’s terrified of everything. He is. But he hates it. But he is.

  
⚜

  
I’m going to unbutton your shirt, okay? Let go of your hands. Shh. Come on. I’ve got you. God, I always said double-breasted coats were a hassle. Nice, but a hassle. Okay. There’s nothing here. I’m going to check under your shirt too. I’m sorry this has to hurt you. I’m sorry.

  
⚜

  
The modern balcony is meant for leisure activities such as sipping a glass of wine, reclining under the stars with only your childhood affliction of self-doubt for company, and having a romantic midnight rendezvous. If one wishes to, they may bring out several glasses of wine, or several bottles. They may also extend the date with self-doubt to the next morning, and then the rest of their lives. The two boys, or princes, if you will, held up on the balcony of the crown prince’s quarters, are not doing any of the above. They have fulfilled the romance, and they have fulfilled the night. But the fist-sized mark over Miya Atsumu’s heart defies the laws of the modern balcony, which decree that one should not go and get cursed by some powerful, vengeful sorcerer. And then come back. And then fall over.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Shouyou whispers. Atsumu tilts his head back, gritting his teeth. The mark is still growing. Blackening. Shooting across his skin, like the roots of a plant reaching deeper into the earth.

Atsumu hacks up a lung, or a laugh. “I sure fucking wish I were.” 

A long time ago, before he began formal lessons with Sakusa, Oikawa taught him how to use magic. Oikawa did not teach him everything. There was no point in doing so with the gloves and the tattoos in the story, but Oikawa emphasized, nonetheless, that his magic was something powerful. Powerful magic, Oikawa said, his earrings twinkling like glass, is still powerful magic, no matter how many times one tries to halve it. A quarter of yours is enough to put a castle like this under the earth. Even an eighth could fell a giant. Even a twelfth.

So Oikawa taught him how to turn apples into poison, and write sunlight into the walls, how to create illusions from the shafts of morning light that shot into the castle each day like comets. This was Solis, after all. Kingdom of light, kingdom of kindness. There was an abundance of bright things to work with, at least in name, even if the underside of each object was matted with dirt and history. Shouyou absorbed everything Oikawa gave him, curiosity edged out by boredom, edged out by hunger, hunger for truth, hunger for the raw cherry-core of life itself. Shouyou wanted to know everything.

And finally, when Oikawa had run out of weapons to hand him, he sat Shouyou down in a corner of the library. This would be the first and last time he would have access to the hidden archives, and it was an opportunity Oikawa had taken great pains to procure, though Shouyou would never know this. As Oikawa pulled down book after book from the tall, looming, gold-kissed shelves, he flipped them open with an incisive, cutting motion. He spoke to Shouyou about the cruel, the cursed, and the forbidden.

“Forbidden? You?” Shouyou scrubbed at his eyes in disbelief. Oikawa was white and turquoise and gold, and he had an earring with a big, shiny rock that changed colors depending on how you looked at it. If you asked Shouyou, he was more like a fairy godmother than a cursed minotaur.

Oikawa smiled serenely. “That’s right, your highness.” He turned the page between them. On it was a delicate watercolor painting of Death himself, nothing more than a skeleton, with a cape and a black scythe. Death had a penchant for personal grievances, and a habit of making horror.

“Remember, dear Shouyou,” he said. Shouyou looked up. Oikawa did not call him Shouyou often. “The scariest things in life often do not look, themselves, very scary. Be wary of everyone. Especially those who are beautiful and kind.”

“Like you?” Shouyou frowned. This was more complicated than math. His head was beginning to hurt again, and it was getting hot in the library. His gloves were starting to itch.

“Precisely. Like me.”

Shouyou knows these markings. He knows this spell. It’s big and twisted and ugly, and if he’s right then it involves the heads of more than a few vipers. But Oikawa has shown this to him before. He can undo this.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, trying to pull the right words out of the story. “You’re a goddamn piece of work.”

“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain,” Atsumu replies faintly, his chest rising and falling with increasingly frantic motions. He is fighting for consciousness. He is fighting for the right to remain in the moment. Though really, Shouyou doesn’t know if it’s better this way, if he should have knocked him out from the start.

Well. They’re here now, anyway.

“Fine.” He presses his hands to the black mark, and Atsumu hisses. “Fine. Then I’ll use yours.”

Remember, Shouyou. Your powers are a gift. You are a good person.

Fear commands your attention. But you are a prince. So you must command it instead.

You can do anything.

It takes forever. He has to pull the memory out of the sea, then the spell out of the memory, then he has to figure out how to put the spell on the boy without setting the boy on fire. Oikawa would be disappointed in him, he thinks with a laugh, though he does not laugh, though his palms feel like they are burning and Atsumu is whispering a series of curses so dirty, even Tsukishima would be appalled.

It takes him forever, but he gets it. The fist-sized print over Atsumu’s heart, which his friends left him as a parting gift before they sent him off to die in the castle, is fading. After everything they have dragged themselves through, the night is still dark. Shouyou’s chest is still full of glitter and gore, the party is still ongoing. Atsumu was still sent here to take a torch to the ceiling of his universe.

“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” Atsumu mumbles.

Shouyou doesn’t look up. Every spell must be wrapped up properly, and this one is not over yet. The words are clunky in his mouth, unfamiliar as hands for holding instead of breaking. He sighs.

“Why?”

“It would have been considered self-defense.”

“I don’t want to hurt you in self-defense.” It’s the best he can manage right now, but at least it’s the truth.

The tension is beginning to leak from Atsumu’s shoulders, though the pain remains. Shouyou can see this clear as day, even as he bites his lip, and makes eyes at the moon, and tries to act like this is, ha, no big deal. Haha. This is standard-issue Miya Atsumu. Death and betrayal and death.

“I’m sorry for trying to kill you,” Atsumu says quietly. There’s a tightness in Shouyou’s chest, and it draws itself tighter at these words. As far as Shouyou is concerned, they mean as little or as much as he wants them to. He does not know what reality looks like right now. Is it a sword in his face? Is it a ballroom full of stars? Is it a room, high up in a tower, flooded with birds? Atsumu looks down, finally. Shouyou averts his gaze.

“Tell that to your friends. Make them stop.”

Atsumu pinches the bridge of his nose. His hand is still trembling, though this time he does not try to hide it. “I don’t know if I can do that.”

The last of his anger flares up, and Shouyou welcomes the loss of loss. Wrath feels fuller in the heart than disappointment. At least this has tangible shape. He can close his fingers around its neck.

“That’s right,” he says, his voice quiet, stifling. Like a fist in the chest, or a fist in the face, a fist in the mouth for biting. “You probably can’t. You joined up with a bunch of insurgents whose names you didn’t know and got cursed by them without realizing it, and now that you’ve changed your mind, you can’t do a damn thing.” The mark is fading. The fist is gone. Atsumu is going to feel its effects for a while now, phantom-pains and real-ones, some blood in his teeth, some blood under his tongue. But Shouyou doesn’t feel like kissing him all better. Shouyou is thinking about Tsukishima and Sakusa and Kageyama and Hoshiumi and Riko and Oikawa and Natsu. Shouyou is thinking about his sister. With her pigtails and her butterfly laugh, with her love of flowers and absurd, outlandish spices. If anything happened to Natsu, how does the saying go again? He would raise hell. He would bring it right to their doorstep.

Shouyou sits back on his haunches. His hands are hot, the skin a little singed even through the leather of his gloves. He will have to replace the one that has dried with blood. He will have to examine the wound later, and ensure that it closes properly.

Atsumu buttons up his shirt, then his coat. He does not take his eyes off Shouyou even once during this process; Shouyou can feel them on him, he knows. The moment is ripe, the fruit sweet and ripe. Its heady, intoxicating scent fills the air between them; fruit from the garden of Eden. An apple for the sleeping prince. Does he want to save this, does he want to go?

Atsumu hesitates, then plows on, off the side of the mountain.

“Your highne—”

Just like that, they’re back to square one. Or square zero, perhaps. Or square negative infinity. Infinity is a concept, mathematics is a dream. Shouyou wishes he had never daydreamed of anything at all.

He cuts him off. “Nope. Nope. I don’t want to hear it.” He stands up. The blood rushes to his head and his vision goes black; for a few moments all he sees is splotches of color, distances, the platonic idea of love. Atsumu stands up immediately, moving to catch him, but Shouyou flinches out of his way. Atsumu drops his hand. The distance between them takes its time growing.

“The curse hasn’t been completely broken,” he says to his feet. “You will have to ask them to break it, though I do not know how you will do that. Or they will have to die.” Out of the corner of his eye, Atsumu walks towards the door, back into his room, and he feels a stab of that same old fear. What will he do when he’s out of sight, what will he reveal this time? He has tasted the prince’s heart on a silver platter once, already, in this lifetime. What if he decides he wants more?

The sound of a door opening. Atsumu is leaving. Shouyou looks up, finally. He is still watching him. He looks like he has something to say. Standing bathed in the warm yellow light of Shouyou’s quarters, looking through the balcony doors to Shouyou, clothed in night, his black gloves stained with blood and misery, no painting has been stranger. If he were not the one with Death’s hands twined around his neck, Shouyou might even laugh. A tragicomedy, this one. An awful fucking story.

They will have to fix this somehow. Atsumu is the only one with the key and the knife, even though it should be illegal to hold both at once. Solis cannot fall. Not like this.

“Just.” Shouyou searches for a way to convey the fucked-up knot in his chest, and comes up blank. “Just go away for now, please.”

Atsumu inclines his head, polite as the first day they met. Then he slips into the hallway, shutting the door quietly behind him. No kiss good night this time. No dreamy waltz back home through the stars.

  
⚜

  
The theory had gone that if he told the prince he had changed his mind about killing him, before telling him that he had initially been planning on killing him, then the two statements would have offset each other. Like how a body that collides with another body hangs, for a moment, in the air, suspended like a star. Because he had changed his mind. He has changed his mind. He looked at the prince, hunched over his body on the balcony, his hands cold on his chest and his expression tight, pained, and thought that he couldn’t kill him. Miya Atsumu never wanted to kill anyone. The other party had always struck first. He had done it all in self-defense. Always.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ava](https://open.spotify.com/track/2uJ6iDuyoWXtMa0KvebF4C?si=nPDU29xmQN2zSk9UoRu8gQ)

He sleeps through his morning routine. The chambermaids tip-toe into his room and throw the windows open with violent cheer. Sakusa sends his vipers, who slither unattractively across his bed covers, having been trained not to bite, but not on ways to be pleasant. Sakusa sends Sakusa, who is pissed off and upset because Sakusa doesn’t like to waste time, and preparations are finally underway for his coming of age ceremony, and Hinata Shouyou feigns death. He is trying to sleep a lifetime of misery off. He drags the covers back over his head and groans, loudly enough for the royal entourage in his room to hear, mumbling something about a stomach ache or the beginnings of a fever. They ignore him.

But they don’t drag him out of bed, and he doesn’t tell them about Miya Atsumu, and every time someone knocks on his door and sticks their head inside, he wonders if he should. There are just two weeks left until his coming of age ceremony. If Miya Atsumu has not lied, if Miya Atsumu is being honest for once in his life, then they have just two weeks left until everything goes up in flames.

Rinse and repeat. Rise and shine. Shouyou scrubs the heels of his hand down his face and blinks; his hair is longer than it has ever been before. He wonders if he should cut it. He decides that he will not.

His mother once told him that forgiveness was a way to keep the self alive. She claimed that the world was big and good and sacred, generous to the soul who was generous in turn, and that love could turn someone holy. But his mother is not here anymore.

Shouyou wonders, walking dazedly through the hallways of the castle, if Atsumu has ever forgiven himself for anything.

Can he forgive this? Does he want to? Can Shouyou forgive him, first of all, before he can forgive himself? Shouyou’s reflection swims in the moat, as he peers into the water from above the outer wall of the castle. He waves at it with a gloved hand, and a gloved hand waves back. The glove is new. Sakusa had handed him a spare. Sakusa had looked concerned to see him standing outside his study, not smiling with his heart in his throat.

Shouyou’s reflection swims. Shouyou’s reflection goes ocean deep-diving. Shouyou’s reflection in the sweet, scented water of the bath his attendants have drawn for him, even though he did not ask, distorts itself. He distorts him. He is sulking, he knows. He is licking his wounds, not facing reality, being the kind of weak, frail thing that he always swore he would not become.

But oh. He sinks into the bath. He’s never been able to open his eyes underwater out of some inexplicable, bone-deep fear of the unknown. What happens when one is able to see clearly through the murky water of a swamp? Why all the rhetoric questions? What are you looking for, Hinata Shouyou, in the boy with the citrine smile?

Shouyou does not open his eyes. There are thirteen days left until the coming of age ceremony. Something tells him Miya Atsumu will not come looking for him until he goes to him himself. Atsumu is no longer playing any cards. He is out of the child’s game of life, this endless game of tag. He has divested himself of his mechanical heart, and will have to find himself a new one all over again.

Above his head, the pigeons circle the rafters, like clouds in a blue sky.

  
⚜

  
“Where’s Atsumu-san?”

Natsu throws her ball in the air. It shoots up like a firework, high enough to be seen from the third or the fourth floor of the castle.

“I don’t know.”

Shouyou coughs to hide the crack in his voice.

Natsu tilts her head to one side. She has clearly picked this up from Oikawa, who has been going around for decades now, spreading his religion. The attractive side religion. The ‘if you look at someone in a certain way, they will be powerless to disobey you’ religion. Spring is thinning out. Today’s selection, fresh from the creative powerhouse of the chambermaids, who are enamored with her as one might be enamored with a small dog, is a deep burgundy dress, cut off just below the knees, with a sweet, scalloped edging. One of these days Natsu will emerge in overalls. The chambermaids are merely waiting for the opportunity.

“What do you mean,” she asks. “You don’t know?” She tosses the ball again. Shouyou catches it, if only barely. “You’re always with Atsumu-san.”

Shouyou shrugs. “Atsumu-san is taking a break. He’s tired. He’s been through a lot recently and would like to sleep it off.”

Twelve days to the ceremony. If Shouyou does not start this conversation, then no one will.

Natsu tilts her head to the other side; her attractive side. “Are you taking a break too?”

This makes Shouyou suddenly and indescribably sad. He squats down, hugging her ball to his knees. God knows he could use a break now, god knows he deserves one. But no one said the things you deserve would come to you, easily, like clouds across the water. No one said you would reach the end of the story without breaking something: a hand, a heart, a promise. He stands up. He pinches the back of his hand.

“No,” he says, remembering the way Atsumu stumbled over Natsu’s name. “No. I’m not.”

  
⚜

  
This time, he knocks first. Atsumu’s quarters are spacious and sparsely-furnished. It looks like the kind of room one plans to depart from, permanently, at dawn. Had Shouyou seen this before the knife and the sword and the Ball, perhaps he would have understood better. Or perhaps he would have understood nothing at all.

The first thing he says is, “We need to talk about the ceremo—” But Atsumu, who had been standing in the middle of his room and staring at him, wide-eyed, rushes forward and presses his hand to Shouyou’s mouth.

“Not here,” he whispers.

In spite of everything, Shouyou feels his pulse quicken. Atsumu gives no indication that he has been affected by the same affliction. He withdraws his hand quickly, as if ashamed, and tucks it behind his back.

He is wearing the black button-up today, his red coat discarded on the bed. His hair is damp, his bangs uncombed, hiding the half of his expression that matters. He leans against the wall beside his bed. “How are you, your highness?” A smile, small and bland. Like ink washed away by water.

“Wonderful,” Shouyou lies. Atsumu dips his head in acknowledgment, then pushes himself off the wall. Shouyou watches him walk to his desk, Atsumu hyper-aware of his eyes on his skin, Shouyou hyper-aware of Atsumu, in the room, in his proximity. This tension strange and unfamiliar. This tension almost cruel.

Atsumu retrieves a piece of parchment from a drawer. There is a quill on his desk, nothing fancy, plain and plainly well-worn. He dips it in his ink pot as he talks. “I am happy to hear that.” The sound of a quill on parchment, the dull scratching of words. He leans over his work, his profile cut by sun and shadow. “Are you looking forward to your birthday?”

Shouyou wants to laugh. “No.” He resists the urge to do so. “I have always disliked birthdays.”

“Mm. Why?”

“They remind me that the world is growing older, and me with it. I would have preferred to have been left behind a long time ago.”

Atsumu’s quill stops. Shouyou leans forward out of curiosity. Atsumu shakes his head slightly.

“That’s not very prince-like of you,” he says.

Shouyou shrugs, then realizes Atsumu cannot see him. He clears his throat instead. “And you are qualified to speak on this matter, because?”

With nothing else to do, he studies Atsumu in silence. When he leans forward a little Shouyou finds he can make out, if not the contents of his writing, then at least his form. Atsumu’s script is more of a scrawl than anything. The letters are tall and slanted, and yet there is undeniably some form to his cursive. He seems at ease, in the way that a childhood sport can be learned again in a much shorter time. But of course he is. He is a prince. No longer so in name or status, but at least in memory.

Atsumu chuckles quietly. His back shakes as he does so, the line of his spine curved over the desk. Is it pain? Is it derision? Is it both; is he still hiding; what is there left to not show?

“Just because.” Atsumu straightens up, tearing a corner off the parchment. He folds it into quarters, then folds that into quarters again. Shouyou’s lungs deflate as Atsumu returns to his side. His hand has not left the doorknob since he walked in. It is almost embarrassing.

Atsumu reaches for his hand. He places his own, bare and pale-skinned, on top of Shouyou’s, sliding it around the curve of the doorknob until he is able to pry Shouyou’s fingers open. The folded parchment is pressed into his palm. Then Atsumu steps away, hands behind his back, his back to the world.

Shouyou finds a cruel half-moon of delight. He thinks of how miserable Atsumu must be as he turns the knob and steps out into the hallway, and allows himself a moment to feel vindicated; he is in the right. He has not stepped off the path. Atsumu is the one who has wandered into the dark.

He leans his back against the door and unfolds the scrap of parchment. He can still feel Atsumu’s hand pressed to his mouth. His lips are tingling, his skin hot. But there is little new about this, too.

  
⚜

  
“Okay,” Shouyou touches the back of his neck, willing himself to say calm. “Okay. Rules.”

“Don’t lie, or I’ll rat you out.” As if Atsumu will listen. “Don’t run away.” As if he would, given that Solis has always been a solution for him, and a burial site for Shouyou. “Don’t touch me.” In case I try to touch you. Don’t let it happen. Don’t let me give in.

The wind takes its time passing through this liminal space, caught between the forest and the walls of the castle. It rustles Atsumu’s hair, his coat, his sleeves. His jade earring clinks against his jaw. Shouyou’s back is to the trees. Atsumu’s back is to the wall. Between them is distance, and therefore safety.

Atsumu shrugs. “All right. I don’t want to make this any harder for you.”

But you already have, Shouyou thinks plaintively. I was ready to tell the king I wanted you. I was ready to raise hell in this castle for you.

Instead, what he says is, “I still don’t trust you.” Atsumu flinches, like he’s been hit. “I don’t trust the king, either. But that’s between you and me. And your friends,” the word ‘friends’ sticks in his teeth like tar. He resists the urge to spit it out. “Are in the way. I want them gone.”

Atsumu leans back against the wall. “But they’re coming, your highness.”

“When are they coming? How are they coming?”

“I don’t know anymore. They know I snitched. They think I’m dead.”

Shouyou walks towards him, his boots squelching through the wet grass. He comes close enough to make out Atsumu’s expression, finally, backlit by what little of the moon is left in the sky. He looks pained. The pain is lovely. Love is a silver locket, and the silver locket is a dream, and Shouyou is dreaming on his feet.

“I don’t care.” They’re ugly hands, but they will have to do. “Tell me anyway.”

  
⚜

  
Atsumu’s voice drops back down to a whisper, even though they’re on the edge of the largest forest on the continent, and behind them is one of the oldest castles on the continent, and no one else will hear of this, no one else is here. It is just the two of them in this cold midnight stupor. Shouyou wants to ask him what the point is of all this, and why he is always so fixated on dramatics, but then Atsumu is moving away from the wall, and Shouyou is walking backwards, on air. There is a moment when they are close enough again, where if Shouyou reaches out he will be able to touch the side of Atsumu’s face. There is a moment in which the frustration in his eyes looks like wanting. Shouyou backs up until he walks into a tree. Atsumu looks like he wants to come closer, but Shouyou holds up a hand, as if to say stop. Don’t come any closer. This is what I meant when I said don’t touch me. Liars don’t get to be pretty and devastating and charming. You’ve given that right away.

  
⚜

  
“Ah.”

“Come on. Atsumu. Work with me.”

“Okay. Okay! Fine. They’re going to sneak into the castle when everyone is at the coming of age ceremony—”

Hinata Shouyou walks back to his quarters alone. He is not keeping a lookout for guards. There are fewer of them at present anyway, and anyway, anyway, Hinata Shouyou is distracted. He is thinking about princely things. Stately things. Like why they are holding his coming of age ceremony with so much grandeur, and Miya Atsumu’s face, and why he did not touch it. He wanted to touch it. He hates himself for admitting this. He wanted to touch it.

“—And strike when you’re on the altar.”

He does not notice that someone is behind him. Remember, he is distracted. Remember, he is going through several crises right now, each one a prayer to a dead man in the sky. He turns the corner of the north wing, approaching the royal chambers, and someone is behind him. This stranger has on a tunic, layered with knives. You cannot see the knives. They are hidden on the inside of the fabric, tucked close to the skin, good for hiding and for retrieving with small, quick movements. The stranger walks faster. Shouyou walks slower. He is singing a song. About moonlight.

“Why me?”

“They know what you did.”

“Atsumu. Even I don’t know what I did.”

“Well. There’s no point in telling you now, since you don’t trust me.”

Shouyou does not trust anyone. Shouyou has never trusted anyone. But if held at knifepoint and forced to give a name, he would still like to say, with all of his heart, that he wants it to be Atsumu. Because Atsumu has given him a truth and a lie and a truth. Two truths and one lie. Which is the lie? They already know this. In which case, which are the truths?

“What will they do with the others?”

“They hate your father the most. But he’s weak. So they’ll leave him for last. They’ll start with the king’s closest subjects.”

As Shouyou contemplates his shoes, the walls of the castle are coming down. The drawbridge is being lowered by unfamiliar hands, the lookouts asleep in their tower, the castle asleep in its own skin. Sakusa Kiyoomi is pacing in his room, restless. Tight circles. His spiked boots draw tight circles on the carpet.

“Sakusa wouldn’t die that easily. He has vipers.”

“They have worse things than vipers. Anyway. They’ll separate you from the altar, then from the room.”

Someone has been in Shouyou’s quarters. At first it is nothing more than a gut feeling as he approaches the door to his own room, his footfalls soft, the footfalls behind him softer. There is a disturbance in the air. Something woody, something burnt. There is an unfamiliar sensing. He turns to look over his shoulder, thinking maybe Atsumu has followed him back up. The hallway is empty. He looks back. Someone claps a hand over his mouth. Someone knees him in the stomach and holds him against the wall, eyes wide and unseeing, as they mutter something under their breath. Spellwork, Shouyou thinks wildly. They’re going to spell me. He tries to bite the hand that has caught him. His attacker shoves his head into the wall.

“Why would they do that?”

“They know what you did.”

“Ugh, not this again.”

“They do. I’m sorry. So do I.”

“Well I’m sorry too. I’m sorry for what’s going to happen to me, because it sounds awful.”

“We’re going to do something to stop it.”

“Yeah, no shit. If not I would have let you die that day.”

Shouyou sees stars. The horrible, crashing, falling kind, screaming through the atmosphere of his mind and tearing into his brain with claws. His head is splitting apart like an apple, cleaved in half. His attacker stops muttering. His attacker presses a hand to Shouyou’s chest, and as his vision clears for a second, Shouyou realizes with vivid horror that they are smiling.

“For all it’s worth, your highness, I would never let you die. Not in a thousand lifetimes.”

“...stop it, Atsumu.”

“I mean it. I swear. On my family’s name.”

The stars die and go to sleep. Dawn descends upon the castle. Everything is exactly where it should be except for fifteen shadows in the secret tunnels, fifteen who are angry, vengeful, mercenary. And the crown prince of this kingdom, bound by a spell whose name he does not know, being dragged by the hair down an empty hallway.

“You wouldn’t.”

“I would. I know I can’t make it up to you now, your highness. I know you’re angry, and upset, and I did this to you. But I’ll find a way to prove it, I promise.

“You told me once that a prince never breaks a promise. And I think you’re right. Watch me. I won’t break this one.”

  
⚜

  
Oikawa Tooru is not a particularly interesting person. Before he was a court mage he was a court mage, and before he was a court mage he was a court mage, and before he was a court mage he was a boy. As all grown men must begin. From boys.

His first assignment was to figure out why he would not stop glowing like he had swallowed a star. At this point he was about ten, scrawny and stick-like with wide, brown eyes and uneven, uncut bangs. This made the overall effect all the more concerning. He was a walking torch. But he was not burning, or about to burn, or on fire. Just very bright.

Several murder and kidnapping attempts, he figured it out, and so he received his second assignment, this time a formal one, issued on parchment and marked with a gold seal, to be a court mage. Fight for me, demanded the king of some kingdom or another. Tooru was not particularly smitten with his attitude, which he thought was dull and boorish. But he liked the aesthetics of the castle, with its high outer walls and the bright turquoise tiles of the fountain, clear as the sea. He had never been to the sea. He had been born in a sand dune and left to die there.

Anyway, this king died eventually and with him died the contract they had signed, with blood or sweat or whatever, so Tooru went on wandering. By now, he was well over a hundred, his body preserved by magic and mirth. But he had decided that if he was going to live forever, he might as well do so in his best form. So he picked an arbitrary number, twenty-five or twenty-seven or something, and he stuck with it. He fashioned himself something nice out of white and gold and turquoise. He stayed gorgeous.

Which was likely how he got his third, fourth, and fifth assignments. Then his sixth came and went, and then there was a dry spell in which Tooru went to the ocean and decided that it was disappointing. Along the way he met all sorts of other magic-users, and they gave him smatterings of advice. Trust no one. Protect yourself; jewelry is excellent for this, particularly objects made of fine metals and stones, because precious things are desirable. Trust no one.

So, anyway, Oikawa Tooru trusted no one. He heeded their advice, collecting shiny things and sticking them in his hair. He cut his hair. He grew it out. There was a dry spell in which he decided to shave bald and tried to abstain from human indulgence, and decided that it was disappointing. Oikawa Tooru was full of shit. Gorgeous shit. But still shit.

At some point he got bored of everything, so he dipped his toes into the circuitry that connected powerful mages with castles in need of such power. There was a vacancy in one of the odder kingdoms, whose secrets were well-kept enough that it took Tooru several months of digging to get to the bottom, and in the process won his interest. It was also one of the older kingdoms, though this, too, had been carefully hidden. Solis, kingdom of pacifists his ass. They were no pacifists. They were tired.

It was perfect. Tooru was tired, too. So he waltzed into that big old castle with its red and gold tapestries, and he leaned all his weight on one hip, holding his staff out in front of him like a prize, and he grinned.

“Let me work for you,” he said.

This is the story of how one immortal, undying mage got himself tied to a king with no heart, but rather, a strange lump of heart-shaped coal in his chest. Tooru swears upon this. The other mages will not acknowledge his words; they are afraid. After all, there were twenty-seven more mages in this castle once upon a time, and now all of them are dead. But Tooru has never let fear get the better of him. Tooru is above fear, because Tooru is invincible. So he means it, with every ounce of his thousand-year-soul, when he says that the king of Solis is a bastard. Hinata Hiroto is a big fucking bastard.

  
⚜

  
“Miya.”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

“Still hung up over your twin? After all these years? Oh my, Miya, I see you are still a child at heart.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“Have a grape.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Oh, and, nice earring, by the way. Where did you get it from? I’d like to have a word with its creator. Enchanter. With the person who got it to be like that. That’s quite the earring.”

  
⚜

  
He had always assumed that he would die young. After all, revenge was not some silver overhang which he hoped to pass under; it was the thing at the end of the road. The scythe of Death could pass over his head and cleave him in half after that, for all he cared. There was sparingly little in life that he valued. Kita. Kita’s words, which had shaped the latter half of his universe. But even Kita and his words could not take precedence over the other boy in the closet, who sat at the back of his mind like a little lamb of god. Killed, and resurrected, over and over, like the centerpiece of a play. Killed, and killed, and cursed to keep dying until Atsumu got back at god for putting him there.

So when he found himself face to red-tipped beak with that hippogriff, he began to doubt his priorities. Watching his arm thud to the floor like a wooden limb pulled from a marionette, he chalked the strangeness up to the blood loss. Everything had gone awry in his head from pain. It would right itself once he had recovered.

He recovered. He waited, patiently, for the bland yet ugly face of his doubt to turn away. Instead, the prince walked into the garden and sat down on a bench beside him, and put his head on his shoulder. His eyes had caught on the gem embedded in the collar of Atsumu’s coat with a strange, possessive kind of glint. Atsumu felt something run up his spine. Fear, perhaps. Or indignation.

Later, he discovered that it had in fact been a kind of misguided desire. To, ah, to tug back. To yank that same jewel from the prince’s collar, and stuff it down the pocket of his pants. He wanted something from him, or maybe he wanted him, or maybe he liked the way the prince looked with his hair swept back from his forehead, sweaty and annoyed at the boy who had a sword at his neck.

So, surprise. He wants him. This did not occur to him until much, much later, but by then he had already given up everything, and the great gears of fate had been put in motion, the future barreling down the side of the mountain towards them. He looked at Hinata Shouyou, laughing, pink-faced, as Atsumu spun him across the ballroom, their fingers twined together, their footsteps clumsy and mismatched, and realized one final, damning thing:

He couldn’t kill this boy.

  
⚜

  
Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. When the saints come marching in.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [gallows](https://open.spotify.com/track/1aeYve33HMLMBEhB3WVHNa?si=KShk3t3eTXCH_G6ywB7sFQ)

Ah, everything hurts. His gloves are gone and there’s a blindfold over his eyes, and it turns out getting the shit beat out of you is not standard-fare evening relaxation because it leaves one party feeling like shit. He sighs to himself in the darkness. His head is still throbbing. His palms have been cut. Bound behind his back with magic that smells like cider, he cannot tell how the cuts were made, but every time he so much as twitches one finger and the skin of his palms stretches in the most unassuming way, the entire surface lights up with pain. An inferno of pain. Call him dramatic. His palms are criss-crossed with long, clean cuts, each one running precisely over a segment of his tattoos. This is dramatic to him.

So everything hurts. His hands are fucked up, and his gloves are missing. This means he won’t be doing any magic for a long, long while, because if his hands are fucked up and his gloves are missing then it’s not just a matter of being scolded anymore. It’s a hippogriff situation. People could die. Limbs could come off. Aside from that pressing matter, his wrists are bound with magic. His feet are bound, also with magic, and every time he tries to tug his legs away he feels something heavy drag on the floor beside him. The blindfold over his eyes is scratchy and smells like earth, which leads him to conclude that it is not a product of magic, but he can’t reach it anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. The hair at the back of his head is matted with blood, from where his kidnapper had slammed him against the wall. His ribcage hurts. Something may be broken.

It is no longer as simple a matter as throwing his hands in the air, and saying, “something is wrong.” In a lesser story, in Pinocchio’s fairytale or Medusa’s eulogy, there might be some easy way out of this: a secret pressed beneath his tongue. A key tucked into the pocket of his coat. But this is no fairytale written by an old, dead man with a house full of unwashed dishes and a drinking problem. This is the story gone haywire. This is the abandoned manuscript.

He inhales cold, stale air and his body shivers in protest. Shouyou could panic now, if he wanted to. He could throw a fit and wear himself out, struggling valiantly until he wore himself out and passed out on the floor. But that would not be very princelike of him. The crown prince of a kingdom is expected to dress appropriately. He is expected to carry himself with grace.

The crown prince of a kingdom like Solis, especially so because it is a kingdom like Solis, must look up in the face of adversity, and eat it. He must take the thing under his tongue and turn it into a weapon. So when the door swings open and the sound of footsteps draws nearer, and a pair of hands comes to lift the blindfold from his eyes, Shouyou keeps his chin tilted defiantly, spits blood, and prepares himself to meet the clowns who let his stupid sword instructor into his castle, and then proceeded to lose track of him altogether.

  
⚜

  
“Have you seen the prince?”

“I was going to ask you if you had seen the prince.”

“Wonderful. Then no one has seen the prince.”

“What the hell?”

“Yes. Atsumu. I am going to fetch Oikawa. The king is going to be his usual cowardly self and hide in the throne room. You are going to make sure that you are the next person to see the prince today, and then you are going to bring him back to me, and we are going to get the hell out of here.”

  
⚜

  
It’s not as easy said as done. The bindings around his wrists come off easily, but there’s an issue with the blindfold. His kidnappers hover over his head, cursing and whispering and cursing.

“You said it’d come off.”

“I said it should come off. These are two different sentences.”

“God. Damnit—”

In a pleasant twist of events, he can see again. The brilliant high ceiling of the north tower greets him, as he looks blankly past the faces of the two individuals that have dumped him here to die. Above him are birds. Silver branches. Blue light, swimming pool light, light from another world.

Well. If he’s going to die, at least he’ll die pretty.

“He can’t do anything even if we untie those, right?”

“I mean. I guess?”

Shouyou blinks slowly. “I’m thirsty.”

The one who spoke looks down at him. They are the one with the knives, though naturally Shouyou has no idea of this. All Shouyou knows is that they have more piercings than he has seen on Oikawa Tooru in a lifetime. He’s impressed.

“Okay,” they say. “Great.”

Shouyou blinks again. He tilts his head to one side. “Are you not going to help? If I die of dehydration, won’t that be a problem?” He pauses, watching their faces for a reaction. Nothing. “I am assuming you want me alive for now.”

He gets a kick to his ribs for his efforts. Shouyou keels over sideways from the impact, and in his haste to break his fall, his hand shoots out; the pain, here, is rather exquisite. He hisses, very quietly. They’re watching for a reaction. They’re waiting for him to cave in.

“Miya isn’t coming,” says the other figure, who looks strangely lopsided, as if one leg is shorter than the other. It takes Shouyou a moment to make the connection between Miya and his stupid sword instructor. He’s really not used to hearing Atsumu’s last name, and frankly much prefers the sound of his given one. It rolls off the tongue like silt. It suggests wild and unimaginable things, like happiness, or murder.

Shouyou shrugs, and oh, his ribs are definitely fractured. “I figured.”

“We’re going to burn this castle down.”

“Don’t think that’s how it works. Fire doesn’t beat stone?”

Another kick. Another rib. “Shut the fuck up.”

“But I’m bored,” Shouyou says honestly, because who said all princes tell lies? Miya Atsumu can lie about whatever he wants. He can lie his way into this castle, lie his way into Shouyou’s head, he can lie to his friends and lie to the prince and fall over in the damp grass, between castle and forest, while Shouyou holds his face in his hands and thinks about all the ways in which he might let go. Shouyou is nothing like him. Shouyou was born to a dying nation, not a dead one.

A prince is expected to love the world in every iteration. But if the world is not whole, then he is expected to rebuild its skeleton. From memory.

“What do they usually say at this part, huh?” The one with the knives squats down in front of him. They press the tip of their knife to Shouyou’s cheek, just hard enough to make an indent. “‘Then let’s have some fun’, or something? ‘Let’s beat the dead dog?’”

“I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘let’s get this party started’.”

A frown. The knife digs a little deeper, and Shouyou feels something warm trickle down his skin. The ceiling is strangely empty. The pigeons have come down to the ground. They are looking for a way out of this predicament. But whose?

Aw. Shouyou’s collar is all ruined now. He smiles, and feels the blood catch on the edge of it, sliding towards the cleft of his lip. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have anything to say. He’s all out of interesting comments and snarky comebacks. If he dies, he dies. He dies pretty. He dies good.

His kidnapper removes the knife. They’ve carved a long, crooked line down the right cheek of the prince of Solis, and all offence intended, it looks pretty good. It matches the lines they’ve carved into his palms, which have mostly dried, leaving beads of congealed blood running across the skin like an elaborate form of latticework. This is disappointing. They want to carve more.

“That doesn’t sound right,” they mutter, cleaning the blade of their knife on a handkerchief with a lacy, scalloped edge. “This isn’t a party. This is a revolution.”

  
⚜

  
The story does not care where Miya Atsumu is. It does not care, either, what is happening to the rest of the castle, although many things are happening in the castle, all of them bad, most of them irreversible. The drawbridge that came down at dawn let in fifteen wild-eyed intruders. All of them are carrying knives, half of them are carrying magic. This half speaks the language of history, though they are not fluent enough to best the likes of Oikawa Tooru, only the mages that he keeps under his wing. But this is a large wing. Surely he will do something. Surely he will keep the old king safe.

For what it’s worth, Miya Atsumu does not care how the story is going, either. He is annoyed that Sakusa asked him to find the prince, solely because he dislikes being told what to do. He heeds Sakusa’s order with childish disdain, and later fear, and later panic, as he slinks through the castle in search of the blood-red of the prince’s cloak. There are intruders in the castle. He knows this. He cannot be caught. He knows this.

Off in the great hall, Kageyama Tobio is trying to sneak his collection of carrots, a belated midnight snack, into Natsu’s plate when the intruders fling the doors open with chaste excitement. They announce that they are here to kill the old king. Tobio pulls Natsu against his side, flinging the long black edge of his cloak around her. She is wearing denim overalls today, a size too large and clipped over a collared gray shirt. The sleeves are long. Tobio takes note of this, and sighs with a little relief. If the princess skins an elbow under his eye, he will hear no end of it from Sakusa. And her brother will kill him. Her brother will definitely kill him.

The intruders announce that they are here to kill everyone, not just the king. There are four of them. They seem to have come to this rectified conclusion after several minutes of serious debate, but now all the court mages in the hall have stood up, and they are staring back at the four. They have knives and magic and anger. But court mages have blessings. Slowly and steadily, Tobio’s hand moves to the hilt of his sword.

In the rafters of the great hall, high, high up above all this dry human conflict, the pigeons have begun to stir. They are making sounds, though not loud ones: faint twitterings, echoing the concerns of their ancestors. Once upon a time, this castle had a queen. She had orange hair and gold eyes, and when she laughed every pigeon within these walls felt it in their feet. She was the kind of idealistic that could hurt a fly. The flies were hurt by her kindness. Everyone was.

The queen has not been here for a while now. In the years that have passed since, the castle has grown cold, and the castle has grown quiet. The queen gave birth to a daughter. She is loud and jubilant and the pigeons adore her. The queen gave birth to a son. He is sad and gorgeous, and the pigeons adore him. But they worry for him. More than anything else, they are concerned for him, and the shadow of snakes on his wall.

The pigeon that finds its way to Miya Atsumu’s face as he slinks through one of the aisles of the great library is not real. It is made entirely of light. Blue light. Light the color of the ocean at dusk, when the sun is sinking back into the water, the palms of her hands dragging through the silt at the bottom of the sea. And everything is falling apart as everything comes together. And everything is falling apart. And Miya Atsumu has no idea where the hell the prince is though he’d nearly hurt him again just recently, and something is burning, something is about to burn, something is going up in flames. So when he sees the pigeon beat its wings down the hallway, he follows.

  
⚜

  
“—Your highness.”

Shouyou does not feel like opening his eyes. He has, in fact, closed them, because he is tired and there is nothing to look at. There is by all means most likely still nothing to look at. He is probably hallucinating. Nineteen years spent lonely and cursed can do that to you.

“Your highness.”

The voice comes again. Shouyou has wedged himself between a pillar and a wall, tucking his knees up to his chest and holding his hands out to one side, his elbows to the cool stone. If he does not move, and breathes minimally, he can almost pretend nothing hurts. He does not feel like acknowledging the pain. He does not feel like opening his eyes. If the voice of some distant star is one of those things that comes with having the shit beaten out of you by some people who want to kill your father, then so be it, he thinks morosely. He will keep on dreaming. Perhaps it will be a nice dream. Perhaps it will get better.

And then someone slaps him.

“What the fuck is your problem,” he hisses, surging forward. The chains yank him back towards the wall and he slumps over from the force of the impact, groaning softly.

Shouyou examines the delightful way the white fabric of his nightshirt crumples against his pants.

He sighs. “Please don’t tell me the pigeons sent you here.”

Atsumu shrugs.

“The pigeons sent me here.”

Shouyou holds his hands up to Atsumu in a gesture of peace or despondency. This forces him to look at him, and as he does this he realizes Atsumu is not so much embarrassed, as he is horrified. Or maybe it is worry. Is Atsumu capable of worry? Does he look that bad?

Okay, never mind, he fucked up. Atsumu is staring at his hands now. Shouyou watches him from under the curtain of his bangs. Atsumu is performing mental gymnastics, trying to figure out how Shouyou ended up like this. Or perhaps he is performing a dance. A scottish waltz.

Atsumu swallows. His throat bobs like it hurts him very much to do so. “You look like shit,” he says in a small voice.

Shouyou ignores him. “How’d you get in?”

Atsumu ignores him. “You look like shit.” This again. Like Shouyou doesn’t know. The cut on his cheek is still oozing blood, even though it’s been several hours since his asshole kidnappers left him alone, having grown bored of watching him squirm. He hadn’t given them much of a show, anyway. What’s a little blood in his hair, a little bruise in the moment? Scars on the skin will fade. Blood will drain away. It is the invisible hurt you want to worry about.

The saying goes that if you put a prince and a prince in a room, they will try to kill each other.

Atsumu touches Shouyou’s face, just under his eye, right above the place where the knife began to carve. Shouyou winces, anticipating pain which does not come. He can barely feel a thing. He’s pretty fucked up, but he could probably still walk, he could probably still run. He should tell this to Atsumu, who looks like he has let someone die tonight.

The north tower is still very beautiful. And the boy, too.

“Well, you did this to me,” Shouyou says, shrugging off his hand. “Your friends did this to me. The torture session was great. Do you feel vindicated now?”

Atsumu exhales into the sleeve of his shirt. They are no pair of princes in this moment. Atsumu’s shirt is black, and Shouyou’s white, and isn’t that kind of funny. Like pieces on a chessboard. Like the keys of a piano.

“No.” He looks like he wants to kill him or kiss him. “No, I don’t feel vindicated.”

“Are you sure, your highness?”

Atsumu’s eyes go wide. Did Shouyou piss him off, has he finally gotten him back? His expression wavers, like he might set something off. Shouyou holds his breath.

But Atsumu just ducks his head, ignoring Shouyou’s deadly curiosity, his stupid taunts. “I’m going to get you out.”

“How?” He frowns, disappointed. “You don’t know magic.”

“I know you.”

Halfway through a dry, croaking laugh, Shouyou looks up. The door bursts open. The pair from earlier walks into the room, talking merrily, holding prosciutto speared on daggers and slim flutes of champagne.

“Oh,” says the other one, who looks more beat-up. “I thought you were dead.” He has a scar on his cheek which looks an awful lot like the cut drying on Shouyou’s face. One hand is prosthetic. It glints green under the blue light, the seam between flesh and metal clean and jutting. Neither of them are wearing gloves. They are not royalty, after all. These are the people that Shouyou has never been able to meet, no matter how many taverns he had snuck into with the intention of defying the king, and thus the will of a nation. These are the ones that are left behind.

Atsumu turns around just in time for the champagne to fall and the dagger to fly, but thank god for whoever tried to kill him in his blooming youth. Thank god time made him mean and fast and dangerous. He reaches for his sword. The blade of the dagger stops short. The prosciutto is sliced to pieces like a spider’s web closing around its prey, but Miya Atsumu is not. Miya Atsumu is sighing like he’s been interrupted by another meeting in the castle. Like this is all a minor inconvenience, and he has plans to get to after this, which, in the broader scheme of things, one supposes is true.

  
⚜

  
Unlike in most contemporary fairy tales, Atsumu’s ex-friends and conspirators do not hesitate to aim for the jugular. They do not seem surprised to see him alive and well, and they do not seem particularly bothered. But there is some measure of disappointment, and it makes itself even more apparent, when the one with the scar opens his mouth and releases a spurt of fire.

“Jesus fucking christ, thank you.” Atsumu sidesteps the flames, then sidesteps that again. He gets an arm around the neck of his personal, fire-breathing dragon, and then gets bitten on said arm, the sound of fabric ripping almost louder than the groan he lets out.

“Your highness,” he calls, his voice a little strained, the one with the knives reaching for the other side of their vest, the other set of knives. “I could use a little help here.”

Atsumu runs the dragon through the stomach with his sword. He drops to the floor, and Atsumu steps on the back of his head, grinding his face into the glass.

Shouyou tries to stand, decides his ribs are going to poke right through his skin if he does so, and gives up, all in the span of about three seconds. “I can’t, Atsumu, I don’t—” Atsumu ducks, narrowly avoiding a knife to the face. Another comes whistling past his hip, and Shouyou wonders what it would take for him to move just half a second too slowly. An accident. A miracle.

“I don’t have my magic. They took my gloves. And my tattoos. They’re messed up.”

The north tower has never looked so large. Atsumu sprints across the center of the room in zig-zagging motions, blue light spiraling down all around him like stars falling from the sky, and for a moment it’s almost comical. Swordsmen aren’t supposed to fight with mages. That’s not how the rules go. That’s not how you’re supposed to do this.

“Yeah, well,” Atsumu grits out. His sword is pressed up against a pair of daggers, one in each hand, each dagger green-tipped and ugly. “Fuck the rules. As in, seriously,” he pushes a little harder, takes one dodgy, shaky step forward; his opponent and ex-friend backs up. Their knife-adorned vest clinks as it touches the wall. “You have magic.”

Shouyou stares at him.

“Your father lied to you. You can use all of your magic. For whatever the hell you want. Whenever you want.”

“Are you playing with me?”

“Your highness.” Atsumu fights dirty. The realization dawns quick and belated, and Shouyou takes a moment to marvel at it, the way he breaks rules as they’re made, and then reshapes them in his own image. Atsumu’s attacker is taking their sweet time, basking in the stalemate. Atsumu growls.

“Do I look like I’m playing with anything right now. Literally anything.” 

There are a hundred and one reasons Shouyou should not trust him. For one, there is a body on the floor, blood leaking out of a hole in his stomach. Atsumu is now no longer a murderer only in name; he is a murderer in the flesh, boot connected to head, his sword dripping with blood and other bits of paraphernalia. He could be lying, even now. He could have lied about all of this. There is a one in a hundred chance that Miya Atsumu still wants to see the world burn from the wrong side of the glass.

But there are always a hundred and one reasons to do something. The human brain is irreversibly stained with hope. It assesses situations with grimdark objectivity, chronicling the knife-wounds and the broken bones and the ribs, pressing up against skin, pressing up against fabric. Then it takes the broken things and it throws them away. It says: well, whatever the hell that was, I don’t think I saw it properly. Let’s try something new. Let’s try something old.

Shouyou doesn’t hate himself. Probably. But he’s never been at ease, has always been holding his breath, always waiting for the other shoe to fall. Look: a ceiling adorned with shoes. Strung up by their laces, like corpses in a gray sky. Waving at you.

If you can get better, you do that. If you can save something, you do that.

“If you die, I’m not writing your eulogy,” Shouyou mutters, holding his hands up, feeling his palms stinging, smarting, bitching at him about freshly-reopened fault lines and valleys welling up with blood. He hates how vulnerable he feels. He hates the blandness of fear, how it sits on his tongue and smiles at him.

The remaining insurgent, who dreams of red grapes dipped in a swimming pool of poison, twists suddenly to the side, their knives just skimming the skin of Atsumu’s cheek. Atsumu walks forward, his balance wavering. The murderer, the one Shouyou hasn’t sold his heart to, raises their arm, their eyes trained on a spot Shouyou cannot see, and they are smiling. They are both smiling. This is no horror show he knows.

But Shouyou will not let him die. Just as Atsumu will not let him live.

Hands up, palms out. Remember what fear feels like. Remember that.

Now pray.

  
⚜

  
Hinata Shouyou wants to be forgiven. He wants the mercy of his mother, who is dead. He wants the mercy of the universe. He wants his pain to be acknowledged, because if his pain is acknowledged, then he was not born with the sin in his chest, and if he was not born with sin, then he can get better.

He does not know what it means to get better. He supposes it entails something positive. He assumes it involves death.

Hinata Shouyou does not hate himself. He does not know enough about the person to hate him, which is worse, because if you can’t hate the thing in the closet, then you have to fear it. Hinata Shouyou is afraid of a lot of things in the universe. Like death camas, which will kill you in even the smallest doses. Like what will happen if his father dies before he learns how to forgive him. Like himself, because in spite of all the time that has elapsed in this room, in spite of all the silent dinners and the held hands, and the promise of the crown, he cannot forgive the king.

He cannot forgive him, so he wants to be forgiven. He cannot forgive him, so he wants to be forgiven. Someone help him, please. Someone set him free.

  
⚜

  
“He bit me. I can’t believe he fucking bit me.”

Shouyou isn’t sure what else to say, so he just laughs, though the sound is miserable and dry and he wants to cringe.

“It doesn’t look that bad.”

“Yeah, no,” Atsumu holds up his arm. It looks unpleasant. “He tore my sleeve. Fucking bastard.” He sighs. “I liked this shirt. Don’t you?”

The urge to quip back is so strong, it’s a physical weight on his mind. Shouyou sucks in a lungful of cold air and ignores him. This does not seem to bother Atsumu. He kneels beside one of the bodies and tears off a strip of fabric, then proceeds to wipe off his sword.

Shouyou sits in front of him. “What’s going on in the castle?”

“Bad shit.” Atsumu works methodically, cleaning first the hilt of his sword, which is spattered with blood, then the blade. “They came early, it seems. Wanted appetizers and all.”

“Appetizers.” Shouyou touches his cheek gingerly. “Uhuh. Yes.”

“Sakusa sent for Oikawa, and Oikawa is predictably going for your father, who has barricaded himself in the throne room like a clown. So if that’s what you’re worried about—”

“—I don’t like that word, Atsumu—”

“—Okay, if that’s the number one concern on your mind right now, then I think he will be fine.”

Shouyou examines the tip of his finger. The blood has not dried yet. He thinks that he might lick it. “And your thoughts are worth how much, again?”

Atsumu looks up for a moment, his expression blank. He seems to be contemplating the earlier thought again, about kissing or killing, or whatever else you can do to boys like them. Shouyou thinks that he may lick this, too; Atsumu’s cheek or his forehead or the corner of his mouth, which is downturned, which is half of a frown. There is something nice about this image. Undesirable things become wanted. Unattainable things become immediate.

“Enough,” Atsumu says firmly. Shouyou is disappointed. He had been hoping for one of those dramatic moments in literature, wherein both parties are wrought with enough tension that when one party holds out the metaphorical stick, the other surges forward and snaps it in half with their teeth. Nothing feels quite real, right now, anyway, not with the way the evening had progressed from shark-toothed yearning to getting his palms sawed off with a knife. He should have let loose while that was still an option. He should have let go.

Nobody wants to be confronted with the fact that the boy you kissed is the boy your father orphaned. Where are all their small mercies? Shouyou is looking for them in the tilt of Atsumu’s jaw, in the way his earring slants forward along with the rest of him, head bowed in concentration. Where is the thing that should be saved? Behind the crown of his head, the birds in the north tower are almost all gone. The silvery branches are bare.

Behind the crown of Atsumu’s head, something is moving. A body on the floor. Broken glass and other paraphernalia. Shouyou stares, dumbfounded, at the hand that raises itself, like Lazarus from his linens, gripping the hilt of a knife with determination.

Shouyou’s eyes go wide, his half-time head catching up with his double-time heart. Atsumu is still cleaning his sword with clinical detachment.

Huh, Shouyou thinks. Then, oh. Oh.

“Atsumu, behind yo—”

  
⚜

  
This is not the romantic kind of ‘oh’. Not the one with a delicate, harp-like cadence. It does not possess impeccable timing which signals, to the audience, that the story has reached that prized turning point, wherein both parties are wrought with enough tension that it finally breaks through their mutually determined wall of ignorance. Shouyou has a thing for the guy that wanted him dead, two or three weeks ago. There’s nothing pretty here. No dramatic heartfelt apology or confession, a scene where the protagonist dies in the love interest’s arms, and an orchestra weeps at stage left.

Just this. One knife, then two.

Shouyou watches as the look in Atsumu’s eyes changes from shock, to recognition, to resignation. He hates this. He hates that Atsumu seems, for all intents and purposes, relatively accustomed to being stabbed in the back, or at least familiar with it, like he has been in these shoes before. Shouyou watches as the man behind them dies, the hand flopping to the ground as one might imagine a leaf descends from a branch. He thinks, distantly, that he should have bled harder.

Then Atsumu is pitching forward, his head falling onto Shouyou’s shoulder, and Shouyou’s hands are coming out as if to break his fall. Atsumu is breathing hard and fast, stuttering through his words. “Fuck fuck fuck,” he laughs. “Fuck. Holy fuck. Why is it always me.”

Shouyou’s ears are ringing. His ears are on fire. The order of things in the universe is falling apart in his hands at this very moment, each moment shuffling faster, each card in the pack falling face-down on the floor.

“This is not,” Atsumu is saying, his voice strangely far away. “How I planned on going out.” He sucks in half a lungful of air, then seems to decide against it. He laughs again.

Shouyou’s skin is peeling away from his flesh, leaving behind some lantern of meat and bone. He’s not sure if he’s really here. He might not be. He could not be.

“Should I take them out?”

“What, my life?”

What the fuck is he saying?

“The.” Shouyou swallows, and it’s knives there, too, knives in his hands, knives under his skin. Even here, he is speaking the curse into reality. “The knives.”

“Huh? Oh. I mean.” Why isn’t he moving? Why isn’t he saying anything else?

“I guess you could.”

Shouyou does that. His ears are ringing. His ears are ringing. His entire body is buzzing with the kind of adrenalin that comes from nearly falling down the side of a mountain, though he does not know this, though he does not recognize that this is pain. He is consumed by the pain that is Atsumu’s. He has been stopped, by the side of the road, to witness the solemn act of life leaving.

More blood. Blood coming faster, fuller, blood from the veins and now the arteries, blood from the heart. Atsumu slides off Shouyou’s shoulder onto his lap, his face turned to the ground. Is he calm or is he dying? Am I calm? Is he dying? Shouyou assesses and reassesses the situation. His head is a house on fire, and he is getting along with it. He is getting through it.

“I. Fuck. How do I—?”

First-aid. What is first-aid? Second-aid? Third-aid? What about princes? How do princes aid other princes? Is the infirmary close enough for them to reach before it’s over, is Oikawa?

“Don’t bother,” comes the wet, coughing reply. Shouyou’s stomach tries to impale itself.

“What the fuck do you want me to do then?”

When Shouyou was ten, Oikawa taught him how to curse an apple to kill a man. When Shouyou was thirteen, Oikawa taught him how to tell death camas and wild garlic apart. When Shouyou was eight, Oikawa knelt beside him in the courtyard, under the shade of a sakura tree, and taught him how to trick the eye into seeing what wasn’t there, and this was arguably the most important thing that Oikawa ever taught him how to do, because already the blanks in his memory were piling up, and already he was feeling the pressure. How to smile through armageddon? How to wave at Riko, the chambermaid, as she folds your blanket at the foot of your bed? Easy. Magic.

When Shouyou was twelve, he tried to climb the tree outside his balcony. In the process of doing so, he fell from a height of several storeys and snapped his arm in half, and for the ten minutes it took them to realize it was an illusion in the study and not a boy, he lay on his side and cried. They took him to Oikawa, because Shouyou demanded it. He did not want to see any of the other court mages, who at this point mostly comprised prim, proper-looking adults with a sinister edge to their glamor that suggested they might turn you into a frog, just for fun. Akaashi and Bokuto were still in training. Yachi was still in training. Everyone was just training to become someone, to become something that mattered.

Oikawa sighed, loudly, as Shouyou sat on the plush armchair before him, looking miserable. “My dear boy,” he said, rolling his staff between his palms. The charmed spectrolite on his ring finger flashed as he did so, in a brilliant and charming manner. For a moment Shouyou forgot that he had been wronged by the universe. Then his arm throbbed again, and he remembered.

“Oikawa-san,” Shouyou mumbled. A tear leaked pitifully out of one eye.

Oikawa touched a hand to where the bone had snapped and begun to peek out of Shouyou’s skin. It was an ugly sight. Oikawa disliked ugly things on principle, being the glamorous, beautiful individual that he was. He sighed again.

“You know I am no good at reconstructive spellwork. It is a drain on my mana, and my emotions, and when I am done I must rest in my tower for the rest of the day and eat the most expensive grapes in the castle.”

Shouyou apologized. “I apologize.” He sniffled.

Oikawa snorted delicately. “I accept your apology, your highness. Of course I accept.” He held both of his hands, clad in those lovely white gauntlets that all of the castle’s staff were secretly enamored by, over the broken arm. He said some things, though Shouyou did not care for their contents or pay them much attention. There was a sound like a balloon being popped in reverse, and Shouyou felt for ten seconds like he had aged all of five years. Then the pain was gone. He looked down. His arm was whole. The pain had gone away.

“Healing is hard.” Oikawa held a hand to his forehead like a damsel in mild distress. “You owe me one.”

Shouyou tugged on his toga. “I want a hug.”

“I thought I said you owe me, not I owe you.”

“Hug.”

Shouyou never remembered to compensate him for the favor he had done him when he was young and stupid enough to climb trees without a safety net. Shouyou never got around to compensating Oikawa for much at all, even for the things he said he would. He remembers now what Bokuto had struggled with the most during his time as a mage-in-training. The defensive arts. The reconstructive arts. The art of sealing skin and bone back together.

Anyway, the average mage can only hope that they will be able to heal a broken bone by the time they are a hundred. If you are not Oikawa Tooru, you cannot save lives. Or arms. Or bodies.

Atsumu muffles his face in Shouyou’s lap, giggling like a soap bubble tossed in a lake, his body limp. Does Shouyou know a thing about mana? Does Shouyou know a thing about the process of reversal, of going back to December, of saving lives? The price of death is not an easy one to return. Neither, then, is the price of life.

Atsumu’s shirt is black, to Shouyou’s stunning, bloodstained white. Perhaps this is the literary moment. The part where Shouyou shoves his hands under his shirt and feels around until he finds the site of entry, the place where person turns into wound.

So Shouyou shoves his hands under his shirt, and he feels around until he finds the end of the blood-stained river, and Atsumu curses at him the whole time, his words growing cruder with each moment. He had been right; why is it always him? What did Miya Atsumu do that the rest of them did not? Shouyou bites his lip.

He admits it; he cannot save this boy. But he can do the next best thing.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [hell or high water](https://open.spotify.com/track/2ZkXaW1z81xG9I8RXweeBZ?si=cnqco2PFQeeqh5CNJ3Y82Q)

The secret to a long, prosperous life is knowing what is best for you and being immortal, two requirements which Oikawa Tooru naturally and generously fulfills. However, seeing as most people cannot be immortal, they will simply have to settle for being attractive.

Oikawa Tooru is very attractive. He is drop-dead gorgeous. He has, historically, asked several suitors to drop dead for him while standing outside some expensive restaurant or another, but only one acquiesced, and only then because he was immortal. He sprung back to his feet after a minute, which Tooru spent checking his nails in the dying light of the day. He had gotten them done again, recently, but already the gloss was beginning to fade.

So it is evening again. Standing on the red carpet of the throne room, Tooru is forced to reassess his priorities. For instance: is the old king truly worth all this effort? It is a lot of effort. Tooru has been working at, if not full, then at least expanded capacity for several hours now, and dusk has fallen. He has been dealing with the intruders as they arrive, from the door, from the windows, from some man-made hole in the walls. Long-distance spellwork is not hard, by any means. But it is a bore.

Hiroto, god bless his weary soul, has lodged himself, much like and yet unlike his son, in some secret room behind the throne. This, unlike her late majesty’s recent architectural modifications, is an old secret. Older than Tooru. The castle of Solis has always been a relic of misplaced horrors, though it was hard to parse these truths from beyond its bland, diplomatic front. It was one of the things that caught Tooru’s interest. That everything seemed so simple, at first, only to turn out to be so bad.

Since Miya Atsumu was never told about the secret room behind the throne, it is safe to assume that the intruders are just as clueless. This is good news for Tooru, who is getting tired of playing the role of the old king’s loyal night. Perhaps he will go take a nap somewhere. Perhaps he will go spectate on the events taking place in the north tower. The binding contract between him and this castle disagrees, vocally, with him. It nags at him to uphold his end of the deal: to make sure that if this kingdom is to fall, he will fall before it. Mages are, after all, immortal insofar as they avoid being killed. On its own, the body perseveres, uninterrupted. But the right spell is all it takes.

In his younger years, charmed by the queen’s presence beside the boorish king, Tooru agreed to a thoughtless sacrifice. He figured that, as with all the kings he had knelt before in the last few centuries, this would be a peaceful tenure. He would corrupt the youth, corrupt the palace guards, and spend most of his time reclining on a nice sofa while eating expensive grapes.

He figured wrong. The queen passed, and he was too far away to help it. Her son grew up to be devastating. If you looked at it from another angle, one might even say her son was not allowed to grow up at all. He emerged at the end of nineteen years with a small amount of wisdom, all of which amounted to this: he had done bad, bad things. He should stop.

So anyway, if this has not yet been established, Tooru is getting tired of all this. He never asked to be involved in such intimate cruelty. Shouyou is convinced he has to grow up now, all over again, but relative to the hands of the universe, which turn in circles over their head, he is still a child. He does not know what cruelty is, only what it looks like. It makes Tooru’s immortal heart hurt.

When the next person staggers in through the doorway, caterwauling about revolution or death or whatever it is that’s got them all so riled up, Tooru allows himself to be shot down. The spell whizzes past his shoulder, but he pretends that it has landed. He makes a horrible, strangled sound, like the air being choked from a chicken, then falls over face-down on the floor.

Oh. The creepy old mage has fallen. Cue celebrations.

Whoever arrives next will get first dibs on the king. Tooru is going to lie here and take a nap, while around him the castle rages and ravages and, is that the smell of. Is something burning? They have chosen an excellent way to go out. Dirt and smoke and fire. All very biblical, all very fine.

Tooru will keep an eye out for fire. He intends on living forever, after all, if he can get away with it. God put him here, and then god regretted it. The old king will have to watch his own head from now on. Oikawa is going to stay right here.

  
⚜

  
Oikawa the immortal once told him that his magic was a kind of light. “Imagine if the sun had been born in a person instead of the sky,” he explained, waving his arms like the tentacles of a jellyfish. “That’s you.”

Shouyou was distracted by the jellyfish insinuation. “Are you a jellyfish?” he asked.

“No,” said Oikawa Tooru, who was Oikawa Tooru. “I am Oikawa Tooru. And you,” he stopped doing the jellyfish thing with his arms to point at him. “You are the sun.”

“I don’t get it,” said Shouyou, who was sad, now that the jellyfish thing had ended.

Oikawa shrugged. “Congratulations. That makes the two of us.”

He still doesn’t get it. What he does get is that Oikawa Tooru is in an absurd number of his childhood memories, more so than even Sakusa, who is technically supposed to be his personal attendant. What he doesn’t get is how a boy is supposed to be the sun, and how that boy is supposed to be him.

But, well. There are only that many things the sun can do.

“Fuck fuck shit fuck shit fuck shit fuck.”

“It’s over, you know.”

“Fuck you.” Atsumu curls up tighter, the sleeve of one shoulder pulled down to expose a swathe of skin. “Fuck you I just died.”

He might have. He might have died, if Shouyou had not had the brilliant idea of—

“It was just a little heat,” Shouyou says defensively, though really he’s still shaking all over like he’s the one on the floor. Not that Atsumu is faring any better. The exposed skin of his shoulder blade has been singed shut, the skin raw and puckered. His face is white as several sheets of parchment stacked together and then turned into a modular origami piece. He’s lying in a pool of his own blood. But at least the pool isn’t growing. At least he’s still alive.

“A little heat can go a long way.” Atsumu pushes himself off the floor, pulling his sleeve back up over his shoulder. Shouyou watches him do this with a mixture of horror and fascination, like how the corpses of stray mice are often your first close encounter with death.

“I guess.”

Later he announces that he is going to take Atsumu to Oikawa, who is a lifesaver, not realizing he is listing to one side until Atsumu catches him by the shoulder. He gently rights him. He plants Shouyou in the ground like a plant he hopes will grow to be as tall as a mountain.

Atsumu leans in, and he doesn’t push him away. He wipes at the blood on his face, swiping a knuckle across his cheek. “Thank you.”

Several thoughts are exchanged. Shouyou thinks, please stop getting yourself killed. Atsumu thinks, I almost got him killed. They both spare a moment to confront the stranger of desire sitting in the corner of the room, watching them through hooded gray eyes. Then they quickly look away.

“Okay, enough of that,” Shouyou curls his hand around the doorknob. Inside this room, everything still feels a little muted, as if disaster is on its way, but has encountered a traffic delay in the city. The world outside is vast and unpredictable. It could eat them. “Oikawa.” He turns the knob slowly.

Atsumu sighs. “Does it have to be Oikawa?”

Shouyou looks around the bend, down the staircase. “Who else is going to fix you up?”

“I would have accepted a kiss from the prince.”

“Yes, well, unfortunately your prince did a shoddy job, even without the kiss.” The coast is clear. It’s now, not never. There was never a never, not with the way their worlds grew up to be monsters with teeth without them. They started this fire in their parents’ bedrooms. They started this stupid fire. Now they will just have to live through it.

Atsumu peers over the top of his head. It’s funny how some things never change.

“Later?” Atsumu asks.

Shouyou shrugs. “Maybe.”

Somewhere beyond the north tower, voices can be heard. Unfamiliar voices, their accents foreign, their weapons making a sound as they slice through the air. Atsumu looks at Shouyou. Shouyou looks at the ceiling. The ceiling comes down from its pedestal for a moment to whisper the wisdom of their forefathers in their ears. Your center of gravity is the center of your soul. In times of dire need, you may even consider lowering it to make yourself less breakable. Now head down the stairs, towards the body of the monster. Now head back into that gentle night.

  
⚜

  
“Show me your hands.”

Tobio’s knowledge of magic goes as far as to include the part where a mage channels something from somewhere in their heart, and something shoots out of a specific body part, whose location varies depending on the individual. This, he concludes, must be the extent of these characters’ knowledge as well. They are quite the band of insurgents. Fast, light-footed, and liable to play as dirty as is possible in a fight with no rules. But none of them can use a sword.

Tobio’s knowledge of swordsmanship is rather exquisite. This is due in part to his grandfather, who told him once, when he was five years old and playing with a clay figurine of god, that the prime minister’s son was likely going to be kidnapped at least once or twice in his lifetime. Learning self-defense was alleged to be the least he could do for himself, so he did the bare minimum as requested by his grandfather, and then his grandfather died. But Tobio kept going. This was the other half of the story: that Tobio discovered he quite liked swinging a sword around, and had what his endless rotation of instructors called ‘natural talent’. He never quite understood what they meant by that. He saw nothing natural about the way his hand connected, rather clunkily, with his sword; the things he meant to cut just happened to be cut. It was some kind of telepathy between his skin and the metal of his blade. Some strange magic.

Tobio attempts to use telepathy to communicate to the person he has pinned to the wall, that if she does not comply, he will have to cut her. “Show me your hands,” he repeats afterwards, as an afterthought.

She spits on him. “Why, so you can cut them off?”

Tobio frowns. “No, so I can ascertain that you are not carrying anything dangerous.”

Behind him, the princess has been co-opted into Akaashi’s cloak. His is a deep leaf-green, which stands out as a fashion statement and a slight to the bleak black of Tobio’s cloak. The princess seems to appreciate this aesthetic. She has wound it around herself, leaving only the top half of her head peeking out.

“I’m not,” the intruder, the insurgent? Says. One of the court mages did mention, earlier, in a bored and offhand voice, that they were insurgents. Anti-royals or some other. The anti-royal intruder insurgent juts her chin out at him. She is sweating. “I’m not carrying anything. I’m done.” She continues to sweat, while Tobio brings his other hand up to the hilt of his sword. For show. He doesn’t really want to cut anything this soft; it does not interest him. “Take me away. Turn me into a frog. Do it.”

There is some truth to this statement. One of her friends is now a frog. Tobio’s backlog of useless but nonetheless thorough knowledge of the world, informs him that it is a rain frog, with the downturned mouth and the sad black eyes. Perhaps her friend will be happier like that. Perhaps he will find inner peace, which Tobio hears is in short supply in this era.

He turns to speak to Akaashi. “Akaashi-san, are you going to turn her into a frog?”

The princess pulls the cloak down for long enough to state that she likes frogs.

“No, Kageyama, we are not going to turn her into a frog.”

He turns back. “See?” he says, trying to sound amicable or at least neutral about all of this, despite his frustration about having not been able to finish his milk before someone knocked it over. It was probably Bokuto. Bokuto is always knocking things over, Half of the time he does this on purpose, but no one can ever really tell, and he never answers.

Bokuto won’t tell them anything about how he got around to slaying all those dragons, Tobio thinks glumly, as the intruder anti-royal insurgent holds a hand up to his face. There’s something written across her palm. It is ancient writing. Tobio’s backlog of useless but nonetheless thorough knowledge cannot place its origin or meaning.

“Uh, Kageyama,” calls Akaashi, his voice uncertain, a shade lower than its usual soothing pitch.

“What, Akaashi-san?”

Akaashi takes a step back. He takes another step back. He finds the princess’s hand in his cloak. “The, uh, the—”

Tobio is about to make a glum comment about how everyone’s words keep getting cut off recently, and he has no idea what the people around him are trying to communicate anymore, when the insurgent intruder anti-royal mutters something very quickly under her breath. He has just enough time to recognize spellwork as spellwork, to thank Oikawa Tooru for being so pointlessly transparent about how much of himself is real and how much is a dream, and to dive out of the way, before she makes a sound like a chicken being strangled, and then erupts into a ball of fire.

  
⚜

  
Okay, they fucked up. “We fucked up,” Shouyou announces. He presses his palms, lightly, to the wall of the passageway they’ve just stepped into. It’s a passageway they’ve just stepped into, right? He can’t see in this darkness. He can barely think; he’s very tired, he’s very glum. He sighs. “Atsumu, it’s not working.” Atsumu does not reply. Shouyou really, really can’t see in this darkness, and the glyphs aren’t listening to him; that’s a first. He turns to where he assumes Atsumu, who is not replying, is standing. “Did you tell them about the glyphs?” Atsumu continues to not reply. Shouyou squats down, feeling his ribs creak with the effort. He tries again. Hands to wall. Head to wall. Wall to heart.

“Your highness.”

Shouyou looks up, though it’s at nothing. “Yes?”

“Uh.” The sound of scuffling, of shifting fabric. “How long is this going to take?”

Shouyou frowns. Atsumu’s cheese-grater voice is back, the one that sounds like it’s being dragged across coals.

After leaving the funeral parlor, they had descended the steps of the north tower, Shouyou leading the way, Atsumu lagging behind but making up for it with an endless stream of sarcastic quips. They made it back to the floor of the north wing just in time to bump into Sakusa, who was on his way to kidnap Natsu from the great hall. Sakusa, despite sounding and acting much like his usual composed, evil self, looked disheveled. The king is being taken care of by Oikawa in the throne room, he said. Why did you not tell me this Atsumu, Shouyou said. Oikawa is an asshole, Atsumu said. Then Shouyou promised Sakusa that he would get out of the castle as fast as he could, which was a big fat lie, and Atsumu brandished his sword, and they pretended that Atsumu had not just been stabbed twice and Shouyou had not had several ribs fractured by a dead man. It was a good thing Atsumu had thought to wipe the blood off his face. Though the cut stung as Sakusa peered suspiciously at him, and he felt his cheek twitch.

Old wounds sting. Old scars fade. Memories stay, like some horrid monument to life, in the cove of the mind, receding only when the waters are low.

And what of Atsumu’s? They have been here a thousand times since winter ended. But never in the dark, never like this.

“Atsumu,” Shouyou says slowly, standing up. He keeps his voice level. He keeps his palms flat, turned away from the wall and his body. “Do you want to leave?”

Atsumu’s voice is breathy. “Leave? Leave what? This castle?”

“No,” Shouyou says, walking towards the sound of his voice. “Leave this passage.” They’re right behind the panel which, if Shouyou presses the right levers, will dispense them right in the hallway of the north wing. “We can do that.”

“Why would we do that?”

“Atsumu.”

These days, it feels like all he does is call the names of people who aren’t listening. Shouyou reaches out until his hand brushes against his skin. Atsumu flinches. He does not react further than this, rooted to the spot while Shouyou searches for his jaw, traces the curve of his ear, his fingertips sliding against the teardrop-shaped jade of his earring. The shape is both familiar and unfamiliar, like a baby switched at birth for another. Like he should know this shade of green; but he doesn’t.

He doesn’t. Atsumu doesn’t say anything. Darkness and fear and darkness.

Then Shouyou is backing away, his shoulder hitting the wall.

Atsumu stares at him, his brows furrowed. “What?” he asks. His face is pale, his features thrown out in sharp relief. His hair is everywhere. Every part of him that can be scratched has been scratched, his clothes torn, his arms cut, his fingernails bleeding. Shouyou sees all of this. Shouyou sees all of this, clear as day, and wonders to himself if this, too, is a trick of the light.

  
⚜

  
“Oikawa Tooru.”

“Is not here,” says Atsumu, who is here.

“Yes,” Shouyou walks briskly forward, jabbing at the air between them. He’s annoyed. He’s on edge. He’s tired of things happening unannounced, without a memo on his bedside table the night before. “But these are his stupid butterflies. What did you do?”

Atsumu prods at one of them. “I didn’t do anything,” he says curiously. “How about you, your highness? What did you do?”

“I touched your stupid earring.”

“Ah—” The butterfly rears back, as if offended, then resumes its earlier trajectory. It joins the rest, floating in bright, gaudy circles around his head. Atsumu makes an ‘aha’ gesture with his hands. “Your highness,” he says brightly, his face a mask of delight. “You gave me this stupid earring.”

Shouyou contemplates punching him, remembers that his hands are inconvenienced, and decides to keep walking instead. A fraction of the butterflies have split off from the rest and moved further down the passage, as if trying to lead them forward. They are very beautiful butterflies. Small, white, silverish. Reflective, like shards of glass or the polished facets of a diamond. But Oikawa had never told him his butterflies were glow-in-the-dark. Shouyou had always assumed they went to sleep at night, or died somewhere, only to be reincarnated in the morning.

“I didn’t think you’d actually wear it,” Shouyou says, moving through the tunnels on autopilot. The throne room is not far from here, just on the other side of the castle. They will reach it if they hurry.

“Well, you gave it to me.”

“And what does that mean?”

Atsumu trails after him, kicked puppy-eyes and all. “What do you think?”

The butterflies are very beautiful. They are also very bright, as if the sun had been boiled down to a liquid and poured into a hundred butterfly-shaped molds. Shouyou half-walks, half-runs down each hallway, setting a pace that only leaves himself feeling a little breathless. Atsumu follows. For a moment they’re not in the middle of hell, but some idle afternoon banter. After this they will walk back out into the courtyard, and Sakusa will scold him for skipping out on his duties, and Natsu will be there with her ball, waiting to while away the hours with whoever will humor her.

Shouyou turns a corner carelessly. “I think Oikawa has jinxed you.”

“Yeah, well, if he’s going to jinx me to shine like a diamond for the rest of my life, I think I’ll take it.”

Another corner, another hallway. They are closing the distance, passing under the ballroom, moving towards the east wing, where the throne room sits. “I think you can do better than that,” Shouyou laughs.

“I think so too,” Atsumu agrees, reaching, without realizing, for his shoulder. They are strangely at ease again in each other’s presence, at least for now, creeping in the white dark through these long, winding hallways. The hour is late and time screams at them to hurry, but they are only two injured princes, two stupid princes, and are princes still not children? Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. These numbers mean nothing. Oikawa Tooru would laugh at them, if he were not pretending to be dead on the carpeted floor of the throne room, while the anti-royal insurgent party steps over him in an act of blasphemy, and tears down wallpaper with a vengeance. But that is happening too. All of these things are happening at once. The falling apart and the coming together. The ongoing search for the prince, who has escaped from the north tower, who has killed two.

So it makes sense, then, that before Atsumu’s hand reaches Shouyou’s shoulder, Shouyou’s laugh reaches the man standing around the corner. He has friends; two of them. They are holding knives and knives and grudges. They are standing around in one of the many eclectic, strangely-furnished rooms in the castle’s tunnel system, drinking from leather flasks and scratching idly at the spots behind their ears.

This man hears a laugh. He turns towards it, but by now Shouyou has long since drawn away from the doorway, tucking himself tight against the wall outside. Beside him, Atsumu looks up at the ceiling and prays to every god he remembers. He prays to the goddess of victory, the god of the sea. He prays to the god of the sun, who has cursed them all. He prays to Kita Shinsuke, who he has not seen since he was seventeen, who, even today, is still somewhere out there, peddling magical herbs and ways to find them in a little medicinal cart, which he wears on his back, secured with bits of twine and bark.

  
⚜

  
“Must’ve been a trick of the light.”

“Are you sure?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“Huh. Well, anyway, I have to say. The plumbing system in this castle is great.”

(Shouyou wants to laugh. Atsumu slaps his hand over his mouth, and Shouyou grumbles at him. “Please submit all complaints to my personal advisor tomorrow,” Atsumu mouths, very quietly. Shouyou bites his hand.)

“Shit, you’re right. The baths dispense both hot and cold water, depending on which knobs you turn.”

“Oikawa Tooru.”

“Yeah. Must’ve been Oikawa Tooru.”

(Atsumu pulls his hand away, cursing silently. Shouyou does not seem particularly apologetic, though he is distracted. They are talking about Oikawa, which is a sore topic for Shouyou, whose relationship with Oikawa has been complicated by a wealth of circumstances, including the butterflies. Additionally, his ribs hurt. Additionally, his lips are still tingling where Atsumu had pressed his palm against them. It is funny, how between being superficially close to death and superficially close to someone you’d ruin nations to kiss, the heart always gravitates towards the latter.)

“Speaking of which, I heard he’s dead?”

(Shouyou’s heart goes skidding across the floor.)

“Nah, he wouldn’t die that easily. But he’s down, that’s for sure.”

“And the king?”

(Atsumu’s heart goes skidding across the floor, in the opposite direction. There are two bodies pressed against the wall, empty as shells on the beach, waiting.)

“Oh, they’ve got him. They found the secret room. Behind the throne room. Cliche shit.”

“Good for Zoa. I thought the bastard would never figure it out.”

(Waiting, but for what?)

“Ah. How does the old saying go again?” Shouyou and Atsumu have not moved an inch. They are still outside, in this secret among secrets, listening in with sharp ears and soft eyes. “When there’s a will.” The sound of footsteps. Clothes rustling. The voices in the room are getting louder; are they shouting? Why the hell are they shouting?

Shouyou feels something move to his left. He turns his head, slowly, feeling dread creeping up on him, an old friend. Dread and death. At the end of the day, they are the same thing.

The stranger smiles at him like a Buddha.

“Oi, finish your sentence,” calls his friend from further inside.

“There’s a way,” he says, as Shouyou and Atsumu stare at him with bone-dry horror. Shouyou pinches the side of Atsumu’s waist. He pinches hard.

“When there’s a will. There’s a way.”

  
⚜

  
On the other side of the other side of the castle, which is to say the same side, Sakusa Kiyoomi is standing at the entrance to the great hall, watching with a similar, bone-dry horror as the front half of it erupts in flames. Perhaps this horror is genetic. Perhaps all natives of Solis are prone to being betrayed by the people that they trust the most, and then spiraling into a permanent cycle of derision and disappointment. This would explain why the queen died young, and why the king wanted to live forever.

Today Sakusa Kiyoomi is not an attendant. Today Sakusa Kiyoomi is on a mission to kidnap the princess, and bring her out of the castle, to where a horse-drawn cart is waiting with two immortal castle guards at the helm. Aone and Futakuchi are sharing an apple between them at this very minute, which Aone has cut into two perfect halves with a dagger. Futakuchi watches him do this with an unnatural amount of interest, his eyes drawn to the steady motion of his hand.

The princess comes flying out of Akaashi’s cloak when she sees Sakusa at the entrance to the great hall. This puts her several paces in front of the rest of the great hall’s occupants, who, having finally registered the flaming front portion of the room, with its red draperies and its long wooden tables, have begun to run after her. The whole image is rather comical. Natsu, in her denim overalls, hurtles towards Sakusa with a perfect, glowing smile. She has either taken no note of the fire, or simply does not care. Behind her follows a collection of court mages in their fashion-statement garb, alongside librarians, chambermaids, stable boys. Thrown into the mix is the prime minister’s son with his black hair and his black cloak, though his pet raven is nowhere to be seen. Barring Kageyama Tobio, who does not feel fear, all of them look terrified.

Sakusa concludes, correctly, that the fire is a magical one. This is not to say that the likes of Akaashi Keiji would not be able to dispel it, not when Akaashi Keiji is anxious and powerful and anxiously powerful, but magical fires require time and effort to crack open. This one is burning fast. Too fast. Already the flames are licking up the walls of the great hall. The windows are snapping under the pressure. Glass spurts from empty frames and carves up whoever it touches; Sakusa’s palms are clammy; the princess reaches him, finally, untouched by blood and fire. She has finally registered the screaming, and seems bothered by it, though Sakusa cannot tell if it is that alone that has her worried, or the unmoving silhouette of a frog amongst the flames. He does not ask.

Oikawa Tooru is the answer. If anyone could wave a hand gaudily through the air, and set everything right again, then it would be him. But Oikawa Tooru is in the throne room, guarding the old king. Sakusa feels a shard of something bitter in his throat. The king is the most important figure in any kingdom. He is the driving force behind its growth. He is the body, the limbs, the soul.

But is theirs really worth the individualized care of Oikawa Tooru? What about the rest of them; what will they be left with when this is all over? Sakusa recalls, dimly, as he runs out of the hall with the princess’s hands looped around his neck, the history syllabus he had conferred to the prince with one eye open. Pacifism, misfortune, displeasure. The rest of the castle has not started burning yet. But the fire in the great hall is spreading, will spread, will reach every corner of this old, hulking thing eventually.

Your father kept you safe in a world that wanted you dead. Sakusa had said this to the prince with Newtonian confidence. He had nailed the delivery to resounding applause in his own head, and felt immensely satisfied with his work afterwards, like he had been given a task, and he had done it wonderfully. But perhaps he should have opened his other eye. Perhaps he should have asked questions instead of answering them, instead of pretending he knew the answers at all. Did the old king want to keep his son safe? Or did he simply want the rest gone?

Questions, questions. You have thirty seconds to write your answer. Write it in the ground, or on the wall, or on the fleshy part of your arm, which even the weakest of quills would pierce through with ease.

Your time is up. Now show me what you have written. I see. I see that you have written the truth.

  
⚜

  
The first five minutes are a blur. Atsumu starts running first, because he is further from the intruders and therefore closer to safety. He grabs Shouyou’s wrist and takes off in the opposite direction, not sparing a moment’s glance at the three men, who watch him go with clinical curiosity. Shouyou is barely aware that his legs are moving, his heart beating so fast it’s not just broken, the limiter’s snapped in half. It’s going as fast as it wants to now. It is going too fast. Shouyou is not processing a thing beyond the clammy hand around his wrist, the way it keeps dragging him forward. So he follows. The men give chase moments after Atsumu’s autopilot kicks in, because Atsumu’s autopilot is not Shouyou’s autopilot; Atsumu’s autopilot is about escape. If you can run, then run. If you’re still alive, you have a fighting chance. It doesn’t matter what you’re fighting. You have limbs and a body and a soul. You can win.

So they run. Shouyou blurts directions and Atsumu follows them, narrowly avoiding the next wall, doorway, or low-hanging ceiling light. Shouyou feels the skin around his wrist burn as he wills his legs to work, to take him around the next turn, to let him keep going. It’s a child’s game. It’s a game of tag. Shouyou’s nineteen and Atsumu’s twenty-one and they’re running away from the big bad wolf, they’re running through a maze of funhouse mirrors. Nothing will happen if they are caught. Just a little punishment, a little slap on the shoulder. A little knife in the gut.

“Atsumu, you bastard, so it was YOU.”

Shouyou cringes at the loudness. Atsumu tsks. The distance between them has neither grown nor shrunken, Shouyou’s intimate knowledge of these passageways not allowing them to pull ahead because of the sheer fact that they are losing speed. They are losing speed. When Shouyou looks over his shoulder, he sees the flicker of fire in a lamp, the misshapen, human shadows that cut through it.

He knows where he’s going. He knows what he’s doing. They’ll be okay.

But Shouyou’s never tried to get to the throne room before, not like this. He doesn’t even like the goddamn place; why would he? That’s where all of his modern nightmares start: a ceremony and a crown and then a set of chains, tied around his feet, punched through his wrists. Hinata Shouyou has done everything in his power to avoid so much as stepping into that room. So imagine trying to get to it through the underground, through the secret-side of the castle. Imagine being scared out of your mind. Imagine this: you are being chased by three grown men with knives and daggers, though none of them have swords. You have fractured ribs and fucked-up palms and a big ugly cut on your cheek. The boy that you are probably in love with has just been brought back from the dead. You are running away from the three grown men as fast as you can, hurtling through a dark and unforgiving darkness as a trail of enchanted butterflies lights your way. You are running towards freedom.

Now imagine this: you walk into a room. You do not know this room, which is the first sign that something is wrong. The layout is strange and not immediately placeable, which should not be surprising to you; you were never made privy to all the secrets of this castle. Only the ones that were convenient to share. Only the ones your mother passed on to you, before she vanished off to wherever beautiful people go when they die.

Imagine this: two boys walk into a room. Behind them are three grown men with knives and daggers who want to kill them. The room smells like perfume. This is the second sign that something is wrong. None of these rooms should smell like anything but memory. Perfume is not a memory. Perfume is new.

Two boys walk into a room. Behind them looms the shadow of death, leering at them from the end of the hallway. Before them is a wall. Walls for breaking, walls for walking through. Walls for stopping the passage of the soul.

Three walls, two boys, three men. What will you do, boy? Where will you run to now?

  
⚜

  
If we had started this story with Atsumu, then it would have gone very differently. We would have known that he thought this would be an easy job. He thought it would be six months gone in the blink of an eye, and then a loud, satisfying conclusion. If we had spoken to Atsumu in the before, we would have known that he was wary of the prince from the start, not because he thought he was beautiful, but because he thought he had inherited the same dream as his father.

We also would have known, then, that by the earliest days of spring, he had changed his mind. No longer was he searching explicitly for a way out of the maze, or a clear path to the throne room which they all looked up to, secretly, with fear and derision. It was not a matter of sneaking out to meet Zoa, once a fortnight at the darkest hour of the day, though he still did this, though he was still careful not to be caught.

The main thing, by spring, was not to figure out how to let people in; it was to figure out how to keep them out. He was actively asserting his presence in the roster of castle guards, out of some genuine and yet undiscovered desire to keep the prince safe. Even then, dancing around him in the courtyard while he flashed his sword in a gorgeous, altogether unnecessarily beautiful arc over his head, Miya Atsumu was not thinking about revenge. The revenge remained in his head. He had stuck it in there himself with a platonic certainty; it would not fall out at the first sign of disturbance. It would likely always be there, in some form or other, the way the things your parents tell you when you are five years old never quite leave you. But he was not thinking about it. Watching the prince grimace, and mutter to himself, and laugh as Atsumu taught him some party trick or another, Atsumu was not thinking about revenge. He was thinking about forgiveness. He was thinking about the thing that would happen afterwards; the silver scales, the reckoning.

Standing in this empty, unfamiliar room in this same old castle, with death closing in, nipping at their heels, licking at their teeth, Atsumu thinks this. He thinks maybe revenge consumes you. He thinks maybe love consumes you. He thinks that there is not much left of him, now that revenge and love have beaten him so thoroughly, and that he is tired. The bleeding on his shoulder has stopped. But the poison is still walking around in his body, some nameless creature from hell.

Shouyou is glaring at the wall like one might glare at a sibling, in the hopes that they will feel guilty for upsetting you, and acquiesce. There is magic here. One does not have to be the son of the most powerful and well-respected queen on the continent to know this. But it is not making itself known to Shouyou, the way he is used to things coming to him, palms upturned and empty, eyes wide and innocent. Shouyou is frustrated. He is kicking the wall with the toe of his boot. His ears are turning red.

Around them, Oikawa Tooru’s ugly butterflies continue to do boring butterfly things. They have led them this far, which is to say that Oikawa Tooru, by extension, has led the two of them this far. Atsumu is grateful, though he will not say it. He secretly thinks the butterflies are beautiful, though he will not say this either. They hover around his earring, which he supposes is the thing that Oikawa Tooru enchanted, or cursed, or whatever. But they seem attached to Shouyou, too.

A cluster of them hones in on the wall, pointing at a spot near the floor.

Shouyou jumps on this. The butterflies move deftly out of the way, giving him space to work. Tap and prod and scrape and shove. Push and kick and whisper. Whisper magic. Whisper murder. Whisper the things that come to you, unbidden, in the dark. Shouyou tries a thousand things in the span of ten seconds, and Atsumu marvels through bleary eyes at how good he is at all this. He is one hell of a prince. Regardless of what the Fates say.

Miya Atsumu does not know this, but Oikawa Tooru and Hinata Fuyumi were friends. There is a reason Oikawa chose butterflies, and there is a reason Fuyumi let the pigeons stay. They are the same reason. They are the same set of paintings on the wall. Miya Atsumu does not know this, but Hinata Shouyou is loved beyond reason. The world has its eyes on him, even now, cursing to high hell and back as he pulls spell after spell from his memory.

The world will not let Hinata Shouyou die. And Hinata Shouyou, in turn, will not let it. This is why they are all in love with him.

When the wall crumbles to reveal a tunnel, just wide enough in diameter for someone to crawl through on their elbows and knees, Shouyou is surprised. He pulls back, stunned into silence, then whips around, his hair flying into his eyes. There are stars in his eyes. There are planets in his eyes. There is, and forgive Atsumu for being overly sentimental at a moment like this when everything is collapsing and the water is not receding, but rushing up to the shore with vengeance; there is a whole goddamn galaxy. Hinata Shouyou’s eyes are, for all intents and purposes, the key to the universe. It was never the sword. The sword was a cheap knockoff of the real thing, which lives in the boy with Medusa’s heart.

“Atsumu,” Shouyou says, hoarse, disbelieving. In the distance, the sound of metal clinking grows louder.

Atsumu braces himself against the incoming wave. “Mm?”

“Let’s go.”

  
⚜

  
Atsumu’s mother used to tell him that forgiveness was a favor to the soul. She would have known all about it, having emerged from a series of accidents in her youth, which burnt off her sister’s left arm, and the skin on the right side of her own face. The accidents were orchestrated by some ominous figure or another, jealous of the way Atsumu’s mother was so comfortable in her own skin. Said figure was of course wrong; his mother was not just comfortable, she was proud. She was a fire-user, and fire-users are always proud. Theirs is the magic of the earth. Theirs is the magic that seeps through the veins of the universe.

It was miserably ironic, then, that she would die at the hands of someone else’s flames. As if she would have preferred to go out in a flurry of snowflakes, or a rush of tsunami waters. She wouldn’t have. But perhaps Atsumu would have felt better.

He did not get to watch her die. He did not get to watch anyone die from inside the closet of his childhood bedroom, curled up on the floor with his knees tucked into his chest. All he saw was the aftermath. So that was the only thing that stayed.

But that is beside the point. The point is, Atsumu knows forgiveness is a favor. That was the way his mother put it across to them, sitting cross-legged with him and Osamu on her bed with the patchwork quilt, Kaoru sleeping at the foot of it, their eyes glued to the way her hands danced through the air like birds. Forgiveness is a thing that you do for yourself. It is a birthday present. Forgiveness is life, after death, after disaster.

You cannot live without letting go, Osamu, Atsumu. You have to let go.

Atsumu doesn’t know a lot of things about the universe. He doesn’t know how to tell the difference between death camas and wild garlic. He doesn’t know the quickest way to calm a rogue hippogriff. He doesn’t know what happens to princes who live to see their ninth birthday, because the other prince that used to sleep in his room died before he could get there, and now he treats all his birthdays like funerals. Now he sleeps with the lights off, his face to the wall, his dreams tucked under his pillow like charms. Do not leave this room. Do not let them know you are afraid.

Anyway, he’s tired. Fuck the room or the dream or whatever other thing has been haunting him since he won his life back from god’s stupid lottery, fuck the ache in his bones. He keeps getting stabbed; first, with magic, then with knives tipped with poison or death or whatever other thing is out to eat his heart. Maybe the universe is out to eat his heart. Maybe god and his stupid lottery are hungry.

Miya Atsumu has never forgiven himself for anything. We know this, the way we know everything that dies leaves something behind, and boys with steel are dropped from the sky like stars. But if he makes the right decision now, then perhaps he will be able to take that first step forward, through the big white blizzard that marks the end of winter, and the slow, soft-footed transition into the first days of spring.

  
⚜

  
It’s spring. Let go.


	13. Chapter 13

“What do you mean, you’re not coming?”

Atsumu glances over his shoulder, biting the inside of his cheek. He looks back. Shouyou is sitting on the edge of the narrow tunnel, one knee tucked under him.

“I mean I’m not coming,” Atsumu says, shrugging. “I can’t go through that. It’s too narrow.”

Shouyou’s expression wavers like it’s been pulled underwater. “You’ll die.”

Atsumu runs a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “Your father will die if you don’t go to him.”

“My father isn’t shi—”

“—I know. I know, your highness. I’ve never held it against you.” The sound of knives is getting louder, getting closer. If Atsumu doesn’t send him off now. If Atsumu doesn’t get Shouyou into that damn tunnel. “But you have something you need to say to him, don’t you?”

Shouyou bristles. His hands curl into fists at his sides, and Atsumu feels an odd kind of deja vu. He wants to remind him that he’s still hurt, that this will open the wounds in his palms, but Shouyou looks up at him through the white glare of Oikawa Tooru’s butterflies, his eyes bright as dawn, armageddon caught between his teeth.

“So what?”

“So you have to go to him.”

“And you’ll just die?”

Atsumu sighs, kneeling before him. The poison is doing stuff. Cool stuff. Even this slow change in altitude makes his head spin, like he’s been tossed from a merry-go-round. One of those lovely, gaudy merry-go-rounds that sometimes came to the capital of Canis. With the horses and their painted laughter. Oh, how Atsumu wants to be young again.

“Hinata Shouyou,” he says, taking Shouyou’s hands in his, gently peeling his fingers away from his palms. His hands are so pale. They’ve been hidden away for all this time, hidden from the eye of the sun, and the skin is soft, like parchment, like something breakable. He looks breakable, so Atsumu is afraid. So Atsumu wants to keep him safe.

But he meant to kill him. Some things, you live with forever. Shouyou’s lower lip trembles.

“You owe it to yourself,” Atsumu continues, low and urgent. “To find out what happened in those three years.” He rubs his thumbs along Shouyou’s fingers, massaging, feeling, remembering. “You’re not a freak, your highness. You’re a person. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever met.” It’s a struggle to get the last few words out, he could be dying, why does he always feel like this? Was it not enough to come so close to death and an angel just once in his life? Must it happen again?

Maybe when you love someone enough, you’d run down the side of the mountain to put their smile in a glass jar. Maybe love fucks you up. Shouyou looks like his heart has just been pulled through a cheese grinder. Atsumu doesn’t think he’s ever made anyone look like this before. He will have to memorize this moment, tuck it away in the breast pocket of his coat to return to when he is old and gray.

“I should have stabbed you that day,” Shouyou says, angry and helpless and beautiful.

Atsumu kisses his forehead. “You’re right. It’s a pity you didn’t.” He gives Shouyou the lightest of shoves, careful not to hurt him any more than he already has. “Now go.”

“Atsumu, I—”

“Go. Don’t you dare look back. I’m a sword instructor, not a pile of rocks. I’ll figure something out.”

“I want another kiss.”

“Well, I want another chance to dance with you. But we can’t always have what we want, can we? Good-bye, your highness.”


	14. Chapter 14

“Hey, Aone.”

“Mm.”

“Can we go yet?”

“Mm.”

“Is that a yes?”

“No. It is a no.”

“It looks bad up there. I mean, we’ll be fine, but I’m worried about the rest.”

“Yes. That is why we cannot go yet.”

“When can we go?”

“When the prince has saved the day.”

“Hah? Why him?”

“Because you sound like him right now, Futakuchi. Here. Have another apple slice.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [once upon a dream](https://open.spotify.com/track/2C10p0VZJHYj07oBALeUE3?si=1IwP__U8RPqk0UMANI2vyQ)

When Shouyou was five, he got lost in the castle. He no longer remembers that this happened, though the story is unsure if this is due to the natural loss of your childhood memories as one grows into adulthood, or further tampering on the part of his father. As we all know, Hiroto the Vanquisher was named thus for his habit of carving a path of destruction through whichever kingdom had the misfortune of making his acquaintance. But he was also very good at doing so with his son’s memories.

Some say that the personality cannot exist without the memory. Some say that you are built upon the small things you do each day, that it is with the accumulation of multiple lives lived over the course of many years, that the soul becomes a person. This is a popular belief, for obvious reasons. Everyone wants to think that they are an accumulation of inevitabilities. We would all like to blame something; all the better if the thing we wish to blame is situated so far away, in such a distant iteration of the past, that it can no longer be traced back to your sins.

And what of those with faulty memories? What of those met with misfortune? If you have a hole in your head in your chest in your heart, what are you, if not human? The person who does not know what has been taken cannot possibly hope to compensate for the lack. You cannot fill loss with a greater loss. Absence is absence, regardless of its point of origin.

Shouyou doesn’t know how long he spends in the tunnel. Lately, time has ceased to exist. If you asked him now, he would say the night of the Spring Ball lasted several days. On the second, he was dragged back into the limelight of the universe. On the fifth, he danced with a prince. If you asked him now, he would say he was tied to that pillar in the north tower for months. But it does not matter what he thinks; he is merely a passenger, destiny the old horse-drawn cart that trundles shakily down the cobbled street. He does not know where they are going. But he can feel the bumps in the road with every cell in his body.

Night has fallen when he emerges, into the ballroom, of all places. They are deep in it, far past the hour for good princesses and princes to go to sleep, and as Shouyou walks out of the ballroom, he is greeted with silence. The hallways are deserted, everyone living having left, everyone leaving having done so hours before. There are little fires everywhere. Wrought from magic, wrought from sin. There are lights.

From here, the throne room is only a few minutes away. But the minutes unspool into hours, and as he ascends the grand, winding staircase, he feels gravity tug at his limbs. It says stop. It says don’t go up there. Don’t go to the throne room, not to that throne room, don’t you remember how all your nightmares start? You turn twenty. A crown is placed on your head. The next thing you know, you are sitting on the throne in the throne room that you hate so much, and someone is wrapping a chain around your wrists. Your wrists and your feet. Your feet and your neck. They are collaring you to this kingdom. They are forcing its sins down your throat.

Shouyou keeps climbing. One step at a time, Two steps in two-time. If he lies hard enough, he can almost pretend he’s doing a little dance. A conservative waltz: one-two-three. One-two-three. One-two-three.

Four-five-six. Seven-eight-nine. Oh, where did those three years go?

He sees the butterflies before he sees Oikawa. It’s always like that with him, as if the unexpected appearance of Oikawa Tooru himself would be too much for anyone to handle, and they might fall over on the spot. First it is the butterflies. Then the person, draped in silks and golds, the tight-fitting fabric of his black shirt cutting away at the clavicle to reveal a diamond of skin. Only Oikawa could make it look so effortless. Only he could know the magic and the myths and the truth, and swear up and down that the first two are the parts that will give you the most trouble.

Oikawa is holding a bottle of wine. He is also holding a wine glass. The wine glass is elegant, and looks like it took a sizable chunk out of the castle’s monthly budget. The front of his sparkling, shimmering get-up is a little dirty, his sash a little loose.

“Good evening, your highness.” Oikawa tips his head in Shouyou’s direction.

Shouyou watches him from the top of the stairs. To his right looms the set of doors that leads to the throne room. They are three times Oikawa’s height and shaped like two halves of a heart. They are closed.

Oikawa doesn’t look dead, or particularly beat-up, which is good, considering the castle is a ghost-city now, with specters and poltergeists and dead children. But he does look tired. He pops the cork off the bottle and pours some into his glass. He takes a sip.

“He is in there, if that’s what you are wondering about.” Oikawa gestures elegantly at the doors beside him. “But are you sure you want to go?”

Shouyou frowns.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

Another sip. Oikawa holds the wine glass like he’s holding a lover, but then and again, Oikawa seems to be entangled in a disastrous and permanent love affair with the universe at large. Perhaps this is how he treats things he sees value in. Like ornaments. Like something to be held with tender devotion, and then set free in the other direction. Oikawa raises his glass to his eye, peering at Shouyou through it. He plays the astronomer, and Shouyou the role of the stars. Who will make sense of the patterns; who will write home?

“You do not have to.” He lowers his glass. “You can always leave.” Shouyou feels time breathing down his neck. Time begs him to move past the mage in the flowing robes, and confront the monster hidden behind him.

“If you want to, your highness, you can go back down the stairs right now, save Miya Atsumu from certain death, and make it out of the castle with time to spare for the fireworks.” Somewhere out of sight, the sound of explosions reaches their ears. Shouyou flinches. Oikawa smiles with half of his mouth.

Shouyou takes a step forward. “What fireworks?”

“This castle will burn, your highness.”

“Says who?”

Oikawa shrugs. “Says me. God.”

Shouyou keeps walking. One step in front of the other. One step at a time. Do not let fear command you. Command fear. Become what you fear.

He meets Oikawa where he is, pressed to the wall like a painting, swirling his glass of wine as he watches Shouyou approach. He watches Shouyou approach. He does this mirthlessly, with no mirth, with no joy.

And no matter how old he gets, Oikawa Tooru will always be taller than him. Oikawa Tooru is the man in the moon, sheer and see-through and hard like the blade of a knife, like something meant for cutting. Oikawa Tooru is definitely immortal, though he will deny it, and try to throw red grapes in your open mouth like ring-toss at a festival, while you flounder in the wake of all this lovely deception. He is the one who taught Shouyou how to save a person’s life. But he is also the one who taught Shouyou how to take a life away.

Shouyou takes the wine glass from Oikawa’s slender hand. He sniffs it like it might be poison, or an elaborate ruse designed to kill him.

“And this is?”

Oikawa smiles with the other half of his mouth. The attractive half. Everything is done in halves when you are Oikawa Tooru, as if the full picture is something to be kept secret until the final act of the play. As if the full picture would devastate you, if you were to stumble upon it in the wild. But they have been stumbling around each other for years now, all of them, hands outstretched in search of enlightenment. But they have all been looking for love.

“A celebration, my dear prince. This is a celebration.”

  
⚜

  
Oikawa Tooru has been alive for a long, long time. He was there when the earth grew weary of being whole, and scattered its bones across the surface of the world. He watched the continents grow wings and migrate south to their own places across the ocean. He saw their people lay down roots.

It therefore follows that Oikawa Tooru knows what evil is, which is bullshit. There is no such thing as a dragon which would kill in cold blood; there are only men who swing, unasked, at their wings, hoping to take home a scale to hang their pride on. There is no action that does not merit an equal and opposite reaction. If you kill, be prepared to be killed. If you ask for a miracle, at the end of the long and harrowing road, you will lose your soul.

When Hinata Shouyou was born, Tooru moved his residences temporarily into the wine cellar, where he sat and poured wines and spirits and other butt-expensive alcohols down his throat like he was undergoing some rare and exotic cleansing routine. This was, of course, wrong. Alcohol had never had an effect on him. It never would. He would never know what intoxication felt like, beyond the way magic felt in his skin. But he liked the taste of it, and beyond that, he enjoyed the murky atmosphere of the wine cellar, the way the shadows hung down each shelf.

He was in mourning. He could not explain why he was mourning, or what, exactly, was being mourned, only that the day the prince was born, Tooru felt his knee ache, suddenly, as if it were dying. But mages cannot die. Not like this.

The castle was collectively enamored with the new prince. The horses that had been transfigured from tables in the great hall had to be retrieved from various parts of the kingdom, and the stable hands cried for the four days it took them to do so, but they managed it somehow. Efforts were made to child-proof the four wings of the castle, and the large, open space they encircled. The royal kitchen welcomed a fresh shipment of fruit. It was quietly assumed that Tooru would be responsible for dealing with any mishaps that the young prince chose to get himself into, and yet they restocked the infirmary with gauze and tape anyway, just in case he was not there to help. Just in case. This was the mindset that they all carried with them for those first few months, like a ghost on the flat of your shoulder: just in case the prince falls. Just in case the prince scrapes a knee. Just in case the prince tries to touch a hippogriff, and gets his arm clawed off, and loses his head.

But Tooru was always there. At first, he was there because the queen was there, and Tooru cherished spending time with her. She thought her son was an angel, even when he spit on people and peed all over the garments Haiba Lisa had made from sheer magic. Look at him, she would say, holding him up, an arm’s length away, while he reached for Tooru’s sash. Look what I made.

You have made a monster, Tooru would reply, laughing.

He didn’t mean this, of course. He was joking. Tooru dealt in banter and polite bullshit, and he had honed his craft enough over the years that it now required a certain level of finesse for one to see through his obfuscations, both literal and literary. He was very good at insulting you while making you laugh. Sometimes he meant what he said. Most of the time, he didn’t.

Then the prince killed a man. Cue celebrations.

Sitting on the side of the prince’s bed, his skin still warm with magic, Tooru smoothed out the wrinkles in the blanket while the queen watched the clouds pass outside. It was still light out. Her profile looked like it had been cut from the very fabric of the sky. Her long orange hair fell around her shoulders and twisted itself into the auburn of her dress.

“You know, Tooru. I love this boy,” she said suddenly. She turned to look at Tooru, dressed in all his pointless ceremonial garb. He was older than her by several lifetimes. Yet, sitting here in all his stolen infinities, he found himself feeling very small.

The queen drew her hand along the windowsill until it would go no farther. “I want my son to live.”

This seemed fair to Tooru. The queen was not asking for a miracle. She was asking for what seemed, to him, to be the bare minimum for those who walked this earth. One must keep on living, no matter the circumstances. This is the only way to leave something behind.

Tooru wrapped his arms around his staff, hugging it to his chest. “So do I, your majesty.”

The queen sighed, then stopped herself. She moved away from the window.

“Tooru. Is magic good?”

“Your majesty, nothing in this world is good.”

“Tooru. Will everything be all right in this kingdom?”

Tooru lowered his head quietly. “I will do my best to ensure it.”

He felt a light pressure on his hair. Fuyumi was patting his head. As if Tooru were a small child who had just done her a favor, brought the eggs back from the farmer’s, washed the laundry by the lake. He closed his eyes and listened to the soft sound of breathing.

“Magic lives forever,” Fuyumi said, with confidence that might have been mistaken for pride in anyone else. But Tooru knew better. Tooru had known her since she was a small child in a small city, whose magic astounded the world. “People don’t.” Her voice drew itself smaller, compressing itself into the three feet of sunset between them. “Shouyou deserves to be a person.” Beside them, the prince turned beneath the covers, his hands drawn up beside his face. Now that the gloves had come on, they would have to stay there. It was not sad as much as it was altogether too cruel, like a bad story with an illegible ending. The boy kills the intruder, the boy kills his heart. Now what?

Fuyumi knelt in front of him, looking up to his face through bright, hopeful eyes.

“Promise me you’ll take care of him. Even if he throws himself off a tree. Even if he tries to run away from the castle. Even if he, god forbid, falls in love with someone he can’t have, or someone who wants to hurt him, or someone who doesn’t know what the difference is between the two.”

Tooru took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. He had been alive for a long, long time, but he had never known this. A feeling so fierce it felt like a kind of blasphemy. Like Fuyumi’s very existence was a secret, and he had stumbled upon it by the wayside. He would never understand why she chose the old king for a husband, when she could have had anyone in the land. Not Tooru. But anyone else.

“I promise,” he said quietly. “I swear it on this godless earth.”

Fuyumi smiled for the first time that day. She had stolen the unforgiving immediacy of youth and trapped it between her teeth. It made her lovely, like a rose, like a shard of the sky. Oh, how he would have to memorize this, too, for when time took yet another of his beloved’s away. Oikawa closed his eyes. He would have to steal this as well.

  
⚜

  
Two truths:

One. Several years before the prince was born, the king went on a rampage that lasted for three days and three nights. A servant had made a mistake while mixing his usual evening drink, and though it was by no means a significant error, off by only a few millimeters at best, the king erupted. Several rooms were torn apart and various pieces of furniture destroyed. No human casualties were sustained. Tooru only heard of this days later, and only because he had offered one of the younger court mages a bottle of Chardonnay he had stolen from the wine cellar. He had not known of this before, which was strange, seeing how Tooru made an effort to stay informed about the comings and goings of the castle, both covert and otherwise. The miss bothered him for years to come.

Two. Oikawa Tooru came to Solis because of Hinata Fuyumi. He had heard of her habit with snow, and thought that she might be of his kind. In the end it turned out she was human just like the rest, but that was not the thing that disappointed him. There were other hands at play in the strange spider’s web of Solis, tangled in the bright orange hair of the prince, tangled beneath the throne of the old king. There were other creatures in the closet.

Two. Oikawa Tooru never planned to stay. Oikawa Tooru never meant to stay anywhere.

Two. Oikawa Tooru stayed in Solis. He stayed too long.

Two. Oikawa Tooru stayed in Solis because of Hinata Shouyou. But we already know this. We swear it. We do.

⚜

  
With the princess on his back like a particularly large serpent and his green cloak flapping loudly and ominously behind him, Sakusa Kiyoomi has never felt more like a walking dartboard. When he emerges from the castle, sweaty and out of breath, the princess is yawning, and someone is screaming, and somewhere behind them, a fire is burning. These are all major points of concern. Sakusa examines them, runs them through his head as one might rearrange the contents of a wardrobe. Aone and Futakuchi are near the southern forest, hidden off the side of the great drawbridge. He will have to run to them.

When he joined Solis’s roster of civil servants, he was told that he would be in charge of the castle’s accounts. This made sense to Sakusa, who was meticulous, not to a fault, but to the thing that preceded a fault. The first split in the lip of the earth, moments before the fault emerges. Sakusa has always been good at keeping things together. So they told him he would be in charge of the accounts, and several months later they threw the crown prince at his feet. This boy was loud, clumsy, and good at all the things he did not have to be good at. He could swing a sword. He could tell death camas apart from wild garlic. He could tell you what time of the day it was, based on the position of the sky, and he would do so proudly, pointing a stubby, gloved finger at the sea of blue like he wanted to stick his head in the great still pond of it. But he could not tell you what he had been, before he became the prince who spent half the time smiling, and the other half staring off into space with a vacant look in his eyes. So Sakusa never asked.

Running was definitely not included in his contract. He has not been told what to do after he piggybacks the princess out of the castle like some ridiculous bedraggled hero from a story. But Sakusa has a pair of vipers in his cloak. Sakusa is a master when it comes to inevitabilities.

So he starts running. Natsu tightens her grip around his neck, not saying anything about the ruin, and Sakusa finds himself thinking, in spite of the tension and the worry and the anxiety that has shaped him into the person he is today, that she has taken after her brother in some regards after all.

  
⚜

“I’ve always wondered.” Shouyou leans against the wall, his arms folded in perfect imitation of attraction. “But what is the point of your staff? You don’t really need it, do you?”

“No, not really. But it is pretty, no?”

“Must everything be pretty?”

Oikawa spins the thing between his palms. “If it isn’t pretty, then it will have to be sad.”

Shouyou presses an elbow to the door. He gives it a light push, and the thing begins to move, one half of a heart sliding slowly out of place. The sound that emits from the great oak frame is gritty, loud, reverberating through the ground at his feet. Shouyou would be worried, if not for Oikawa, who is putting down the wine and the glass, who has put away the white gauntlets he has worn since Shouyou was old enough to tell a bird apart from the sky. He lays them on the floor like a mourning shawl.

There is no moon in the sky tonight. Even then, Shouyou can make out the beginnings of a story on Oikawa’s palms. A familiar story of ink and skin and magic. Oh no, he thinks. Oh no, no, no.

“See?” Oikawa says, looking glum. “Now everything’s just sad again.” He floats across the hallway to the parapet, from which there is a stunning view of the inner court. Beneath them is his mother’s garden, with its high metal arches and its miracles. Beneath them is the place where people go to seek shelter from the storm. Only the storm has finally found them, and it has come, and it has gone. Little fires everywhere. Little fires in his teeth. The night is not ending, but it is not beginning, either. It is holding its breath, waiting for the prince to make his move.

Shouyou cranes his neck to stare after Oikawa, who seats himself on the parapet, his legs dangling over the side. “I don’t see a thing.”

“That’s the horror of it, Shouyou-kun. You never see it coming.”

“What are you talking about?”

Oikawa waves at him, his butterflies twinkling like tiny stars, and perhaps this is what they meant when they said beautiful things can hurt you, because Shouyou finds himself wishing he had paid the man in the moon back for everything. For anything. He has done so much in exchange for so very little.

“Nothing of importance, dear Shouyou.” Oikawa smiles with his whole face, and it is a sight to witness. It could be a miracle. “Don’t concern yourself with me. Think of the next moment.” Shouyou remembers being seven, sitting in the mage’s hideout in the clouds, sniffling as Oikawa sung a lullaby to his stupid broken arm. He remembers being five. He remembers a field of blue flowers, and the man who stopped and waited for him to admire it, instead of pulling him away.

Oikawa’s eyes flash in the darkness. “Think of where you are going, and what you will see. What will you do when you see him, Shouyou? What will you do?”

Oikawa hops off the parapet before Shouyou can respond. Then he is being pulled into the darkness of the throne room, the valves of the heart working to let blood in, and the rest of the night forgets itself with relative ease, as if it were nothing more than a single frame wrenched out of a child’s summer daydream.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [beside you](https://open.spotify.com/track/1lnv5XUK0gMv6gkU7URJR3?si=CSDsM2RGR5-VOmSPCej3pA)

_Hold onto your voice. Hold onto your breath. Don’t make a noise,_  
_don’t leave the room until I come back from the dead for you. I will_  
_come back from the dead for you. This could be a city. This could be a_  
_graveyard. This could be the basket of a big balloon. Leave the lights_  
_on. Leave a trail of letters like those little knots of bread we used to_  
_dream about. We used to dream about them. We used to do a lot of_  
_things. Put your hand to the knob, your mouth to the hand, pick up the_  
_bread and devour it. I’m in the hallway again, I’m in the hallway. The_  
_radio’s playing my favorite song. Leave the lights on. Keep talking. I’ll_  
_keep walking toward the sound of your voice._

  
Hinata Hiroto has black hair and black eyes and an acne problem. The acne problem is embarrassing, because he’s just been crowned king, and he really shouldn’t be walking around the castle with his face looking like this. His father also happens to be dead, which is a bit of a downer. But he was sort of terrible for a father, so Hiroto isn’t all that upset. Sure, he wishes he’d had the chance to ask him why, exactly, he’d treated mother like that, but maybe there are some things better left unsaid. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance is blissful. It’s so blissful. Hiroto needs a new skincare routine.

So the difference between being prince and being king is this: suddenly everyone cares. Not about the acne, thank god, but about everything else. Suddenly you’re needed by the accountants and the archivists and the people redoing the shingles on the north tower. Everyone wants your opinion, and no one questions it. I do think you’re right, your majesty. Absolutely, your majesty. Thank you, your majesty.

It’s a lot. Hiroto’s still getting used to having a crown, even if he doesn’t have to wear it all the time. He likes his new throne. The velvet is very, very comfortable. All the gold calms him.

And there are rumors on the horizon, that someone beautiful will be passing through these woods in the coming months. A princess from a faraway kingdom, or perhaps a fairy. She has bright orange hair, the color of the sun at dusk, and when she snaps her fingers they say she can make it snow in summer. Hiroto likes snow. Hiroto likes it cold. Hiroto isn’t sure who he is yet, but he knows he doesn’t like the way heat clings to his clothes and sticks under his armpits. It makes his acne worse, and it’s already so bad, he can barely stand to be seen by the castle’s attendants, let alone the people in the city. God, oh god, he needs a new skincare routine.

  
⚜

  
Hinata Hiroto has black hair and black eyes and a brand new son. He is hairless, and mirthless, and when Hiroto tries to pick him up he pees in a straight line down the front of his coat. Hiroto’s beloved, double-breasted coat. He sends it in for cleaning because the court mages refuse to deal with unhygienic things, while Fuyumi puts their son to sleep in his cot. She has decorated the thing with a ridiculous amount of care. It is piled high with blankets and toys and playthings, even though he will not become wary of his world for weeks to come. It is the size of a small animal enclosure, even though he himself is the size of a fist. Hanging from the ceiling are revolving snowflakes, Fuyumi’s snowflakes, some of which are almost close enough for him to grasp with his chubby hands. They are such small hands. It would take so little to break them.

When things begin to go wrong in the castle, Hiroto’s first thought is to blame the boy. Fuyumi is indignant. She spends nights spitting cruelty in his face in defense of their son, and not his father; Hiroto is hurt by her words, but so is she. How could you think so little of him? How could you see him as a monster? He is your son, Hiroto. This is your son.

His acne problem hasn’t gone away, because the court mages refuse to deal with unhygienic things. Oikawa Tooru does not say this to his face, he is not the sort to start a fight with his household gods, but Hiroto sees it in his eyes. Oikawa thinks he is dirty. Oikawa would rather not have him around. Hiroto finds this hilarious, and terrible, and he wants to run his fist through a wall. He cannot do this. It would be the equivalent of cannibalism, self-destruction, stabbing yourself in the foot. Hiroto is king. He is king is king is king. He has to look good.

He does not look good blaming the boy, but at the end of the summer, he discovers that he is right. He apologizes to Fuyumi for all his cruelties, though she had hurt him back in equal amounts. He swallows his pride. Hiroto loves Fuyumi with all his heart. Everything in the world may go down the drain, Death may drag its scythe across his throat, but this alone will remain. He swears that he will not become his father.

But he is disappointed. Fuyumi is snow, so why is the boy fire? He had hoped for a repeat of the winter months, for another cause to celebrate. The boy waves a gloved hand at him from across the courtyard, and Hiroto feels his skin crawl.

In a moment of weakness, he finds himself thinking that he understands how Oikawa Tooru feels. This boy is unhygienic. He is dirty. He is too much, altogether, for a place as holy as this.

  
⚜

  
Hinata Hiroto has gray hair and black eyes and a big, gory heart with the atrium gouged out. The blood has been drained and now the heart itself is still. Not dead. But not beating.

Fuyumi is dead. In her place there is another child, this one magicless, this one devoid of miracles. Fuyumi is dead. He walks into the throne room and drags a line through the cream wallpaper with the tip of his sword. The wall bleeds. The wall laughs at him. Fuyumi is dead is dead is dead.

His acne problem still hasn’t gone away. His anger problem still hasn’t gone away. After all these years, the things that haunted him when he was sixteen haven’t gone away at all. They’re still here. In the corner of the throne room, watching him with hooded eyes and a blank expression: his dead father is still there.

You didn’t treat her well enough, his dead father says. You failed her. Fool. Fool fool fool.

Hiroto walks towards his dead father and cuts a line through his body with the tip of his sword. Nothing moves. Nothing changes. Fuyumi is still dead, and he is still king, and Solis is a kingdom built on peace. Built on love. We plant things in the earth and we make them bloom. We make them bloom. We make them bloom. No one sees the way Hinata Hiroto’s heart turns itself inside out, still as the body of a bear in the dark of winter. Like something in stasis, only Hiroto’s stasis cannot be broken. He has given his love away to a girl, and now the girl is dead.

There are twenty-seven kingdoms within arm’s reach of his castle. The nobles line up to give their condolences, the queens bring flowers. Come next year, the boy grows old enough with his stupid old gloves to begin asking questions, like: why do you look like that, father? Like: why are you looking at me like that? I’m scared.

He’s scared? Who’s scared?

He isn’t looking for an excuse to set something on fire. Hiroto has never liked summer. He doesn’t want to see any bodies on the floor, and he doesn’t like bodies, and he’s never been good at swinging a sword. But when the boy’s powers begin to go awry again, and when all those fake, mourning kings bite back, angry at the projection of horror they have placed upon his son, Hiroto has just one, simple thought.

He thinks: what if I just. What if my hand slipped. What if the boy doesn’t realize what he’s done. What if accidents happen to the best and the brightest, and the kindest, and the most beautiful people in the world.

He thinks he’s not cut out for being king, after all, because he can’t seem to draw a line in the sand between his heart and his head. There is another line here, between him and the world, and this one is supposed to protect something. It is supposed to keep them safe. He makes all the calls, so he has to be the one to receive them. He makes all the heads fall, so he has to be the one to pick them up. But no one’s called him in a long, long time. No one’s called him at all. 

  
⚜

  
He never hated him. Hate is a strong word. Hate stems from cruelty and cruelty is a product of obsession, and Hiroto was never obsessed with anything except the way his wife’s smile looked from the second-floor parapet. Whenever she passed through the hallway in the north wing, he would stop to wave up at her, shielding his eyes from the glare. She would wave back, the sun a smear of light on her face, her hair falling into her eyes. She never liked to have it braided or tied back, secured with one of the many jeweled combs he would bring back for her, amongst jeweled necklaces, jeweled teeth.

At the end of the day, all Hinata Hiroto ever wanted to do was get out of that long, narrow hallway. He had always been soft. Too soft to kill the mouth that bit back, too soft to kill the animal cursed with bad blood. Too soft to kill the memory of Hinata Fuyumi, resplendent in green and gold, dazzling like a mural of heaven itself. So he killed the next best thing.

  
⚜

  
There’s a dream he has, sometimes. He’s just turned twenty. The coming of age ceremony is over. They chauffeur him to the throne room, pushing and shoving him across the carpet, then sit him down on the throne.

Congratulations, you are the new king, they say, chaining his hands and his feet to the metal. Gold on gold. Skin on skin. A second ceremony just for his eyes, a second coming of age.

There’s a dream he has, sometimes, where he is powerless. He is small but large. He grows bored of sitting on the throne, being swarmed by bodies who want to touch and touch, but refuse to take.

Stop, they whisper. Stop, stop, stop. Don’t move. Don’t ruin the moment. Stay, be our king, be a martyr.

This, he hears. The words scare him, and he looks away, down, to his hands. The hot toss of bodies stills. The chains on his wrists and ankles grow roots. They sprout from the ground and climb up his limbs, reaching for his torso with a sick urgency. Stop, he whispers. Stop, stop, stop. Don’t move. Don’t ruin my moment. I am so close to letting everything fall away from me, to becoming nothing.

There’s a dream he has, sometimes, where he is encased in gold and turned into a living statue. It is a dream he has not had in several years, not since he stopped visiting the throne room as a tourist, and started avoiding it as a native of this land. At the end of all the days, he is a native of this land. This land is his, even if it abhors him, even if it wants to wash him away.

But it’s beautiful. Where time has dulled the memory, the real thing remains as breathtaking as it was when Shouyou was still small enough to count the stars on the ceiling. The walls of the throne room are glass. The floor reflects the sky like a mirror. The lush red carpet that leads up to the throne is trimmed with gold. Gold for prosperity. Gold for luck.

Luck which kills. Shouyou counts the bodies on the floor, strewn across the lush red carpet. Oikawa had not revealed this part of the evening to him, though it is clear from the clean, sanitary air of the whole affair that he is the one behind it. If it were not for the dead, Shouyou would think he had walked into the past. Before Icarus touched the sun, and the sky wept for his ruined body.

The ceiling of the throne room watches him with a thousand pairs of eyes. Years before he was born, one of the first kings of Solis had commissioned a mural. The decision had been criticized as voyeuristic and hedonistic, what with the number of artists who gave their lives to the ordeal, and did not live to see its end. Yet the finished product was so cruelly majestic, even the most vocal of dissidents fell silent. In it, Medusa stands at the mouth of a cave. Around her is a gray ocean. It froths hungrily at her feet, while a distance away, the same gray sea conceals the vessels of a thousand warriors who have come to take her head. They are all here for the golden chalice, they have been given the same death-sentence. Slay the monster. Bring glory home.

Shouyou walks past bodies and bodies and bodies, his footsteps muffled by carpet. He climbs the steps to the raised platform, a high platform in a room with a high ceiling, and all of it is so dramatic. It’s so dramatic. There are indents in the carpet where the throne had been before, scuff marks to indicate absence. There are bodies on the floor. But Oikawa had said that the king was here. Oikawa would not lie.

Shouyou stands in the place of absence. He reaches out with one pale, ruined hand, and pulls the red curtain aside.

Hanging on the wall is a portrait of his mother. Her face is soft with the unforgiving immediacy of youth. Her eyes are wide. She’s smiling. Just a little, just enough for the painter, who was commissioned to give their life over to the ordeal of Hinata Fuyumi, to have an excuse to make it real. It’s the first time Shouyou’s seen her outside his dreams in years.

In his first memory of this room, his father is there. He tells him stories about the faces on the ceiling as Shouyou skips across squares of sunlight, trying to avoid the parts where the window panes intersect, and a thin shadow falls across the floor. Medusa, his father says, was a fearsome, beautiful lady. Why was she fearsome, Shouyou asks. Because of the snakes, his father replies, swinging their hands between them. Those who gazed into her eyes would be turned immediately to stone.

What about Medusa? Shouyou frowns. He doesn’t like the dying, but he’s worried for Medusa too. How did she feel about all the people she killed. Was she sorry?

His father stops walking to stare at him for a moment, his expression unreadable.

I don’t know about Medusa, he says. I never spoke to her.

In his first memory of life, everything was luminous, like a star looked at from up close. The throne glimmered from the other side of the room, waiting to receive its king. His father held his hand. Shouyou thought that he wanted to speak to Medusa, to ask her if she was lonely all by herself, and then he forgot.

He remembers now. Lady with the snake-hair, how did it feel to watch them fall?

Tell me your sorrows. I’ll tell you mine.

He traces his mother’s smile with a finger. He presses on the jewel, embedded in the choker at her throat, and hears a click. The wall behind the red curtain swings out into the darkness like a door. Feeling the weight of history on his shoulders, feeling the shadow of some horrible, unholy thing kneeling on his chest, he steps through it.

  
⚜

  
Hinata Hiroto was miserable for all those years. This is not to say, pity him. This is not to say forgive him for his sins. Pity his son, instead. Pity the one who did not get to grow up, who instead grew into the shape of something cold and unbreakable, and then was told that he would need new skin after all.

  
⚜

  
They say you become your parents when you grow up. Shouyou always had mixed feelings about this statement; part of him hoped that it was true, while the other half, which lived in the unused corner of his closet, hoped against hope that it was not. He liked his mother. She was pretty, and strong, and scary, the way some things will try to kill you until you become their friend.

With his father, things were, from the start, different. His father was awkward, in that way that adults who were never really accorded their own childhood tend to be around children. He had grown up in a world of conflict without resolution, and though the years had worn away at the hard thing in his heart, its essence had seeped into the very infrastructure of his soul. Still, Shouyou respected him. He was a good, kind king, who seemed less fixated on the state of the treasury and more on the affairs that transpired regularly in Solis’s many cities. This sentiment was shared by the people, who saw Shouyou’s parents through, if not rose-colored, then at least pale, sunflower-yellow lens.

The room behind his dead wife’s portrait is small, musty, smells like wood and fire. There is a single window of light, through which moonlight crawls. Shouyou shivers. He can feel eyes on him still. But whose?

Paintings. The walls are full of paintings. Here is the king when he was still black-haired and black-eyed and happy; here is the king at his wedding ceremony. Here is their firstborn, smiling hard enough to split heaven. Here is his sister. Here they are, together, running through the garden full of roses. And here is the king’s wife. And here is the king’s wife. And here are ten, twenty, a hundred portraits of the king’s wife; the king’s wife holding her son, singing him a lullaby; the king’s wife looking out a window at dawn; the king’s wife dipping her toes into a lake from a storybook fairytale, the hem of her dress blood in the water, her eyes creased with laughter.

Time has taken its toll on the king. Dressed in regalia, his gold epaulettes dull with light from a black sky, he looks like a caricature of himself, like a false king with a fake crown. He is holding a wine glass in one hand, holding his chin up with the other. He is holding something to his chest. The gold of his crown beckons at Shouyou, even now, holding out a hand.

The king has done something here. He has immortalized something in this room. But what?

“You are probably wondering how I moved the throne into this room.”

Shouyou swallows his glass heart. It makes a sound as it goes down his throat, ripping up the soft flesh of his windpipe.

“I am not yet weak enough to be taken down by a hunk of metal,” the king continues in a rasp. He swirls the dark liquid in his glass. It splashes down his front. “Though I am weak enough to be taken down by this.”

He peels the wet fabric off his chest. Shouyou’s chest cracks.

“Are you dying?”

The king laughs. The sound is grating and coarse, like a body dragged across a row of knives. Everything that moves in this room leaves a stain. Everything that moves in this room will eventually be left behind.

“The first time we have spoken in months, and this is your first word for me?”

Shouyou says nothing. His back is to the wall. If it were not for the wall, he would have long since floated out the window, like a bad dream fished out of a warm summer afternoon. He curls his fingers into his palms until new blood begins to well up.

“Are you dying,” the king repeats to himself, like a name he is learning for the first time. “Am I dying?” He tries to sit up in his throne, the bright gold and lush red surrounding him, hemming him in. The stain on his chest grows darker. It grows larger.

“None of my subjects wish to help me. Oikawa Tooru will not come to save me.” He laughs again.

“Instead, he has sent you.”

The old king breathes, and the motion is large and heavy, like a mountain shuddering apart.

“I suppose I am dying,” he muses.

The words do not hurt. Shouyou knows what hurt feels like. He knows how it tastes in the mouth; rubbery, flat, bland. He is familiar with the cycle of emancipation and the ways in which people are set free from their demons, or their demons are set free from them. This is not it. He has never seen, in the king, a figure worth mourning. Although he wanted to. Although he hoped for one. Although Oikawa Tooru stepped in at the exact point at which Shouyou might have otherwise thought to open his mouth, and caterwaul violently about how he was sad and unloved for the rest of his life. Shouyou has never really disliked Oikawa; he just disliked the fact that he came to depend on him so much in his youth. As if without Oikawa, he had little else.

Would he have wanted to put his father’s name on the list of names to pass to heaven after death? Would he have seen any value in doing so? At different points in his life, he would have given you different replies.

It is hard to talk to the king. It is like trying to use a muscle you have not exercised in decades, or walking out of a month of bedrest up the side of a cliff. It is like relearning an old sport which, while once fast and intimate, now comes to you only in spurts of exhaustion. Shouyou exhales, feeling his lungs sink into the weight of it. The night is long and dark and merciless. None of them will be forgiven now, not anymore.

The old king pours the last of his wine down his throat. He picks at one of the gold threads on his coat, holding the wet, soggy thing up to his eye.

“Well! I am sure you have questions.”

Shouyou’s nails dig harder into his palms. The pain is instantaneous, and he welcomes it, needs something to ground him in the moment. “What,” he says, blood dripping from his hands, his hands throbbing. “What do you mean.”

“Surely you did not come here to talk about the weather.”

He presses down harder. “Why would you care?”

The king’s eyes go wide for a moment. “Shouyou,” he says softly. “I have always cared about you.”

Two truths and a lie. Two truths and a lie. Pretend everything you know is a trick of the light. The first time your father calls you Shouyou in ten long years, and it is when he is already knocking on the far-off door, one hand on the knob, the other tied behind his back.

“Shouyou, I am your father.”

Do not pity the father. He knows what he is doing. Do not pity him. Do not look away.

“Does that not mean anything to you?”

But the other question remains unasked: what did it mean to you when the sun fell over, and your first thought not to pull it back into the sky, but to cut it in half?

  
⚜

  
Remember, dear Shouyou. The scariest things in life often do not look, themselves, very scary. Be wary of everyone. Especially those who are kind.

  
⚜

  
Spring is cold. It is not winter, with its snowstorms and its endless expanses of white nothing. But it is cold enough to be a hassle, which is why Haiba Lisa always has something to do with her time, moving slower than the rest of the world’s under the moat, even if there is no Ball to look forward to. Over the years, she has made generous additions to the wardrobe of each member of the royal family, turning regalia into warfare. Their coats are heavily layered. The teeth of their boots are designed to bite. Shouyou had always marveled at her enthusiasm, the way one might marvel at someone who always jumps higher than is necessary; with admiration, with confusion.

A chill sweeps through his body as he holds his hands up to his face. His stupid nightshirt is ripped in too many places to count, the air prodding at his skin with cold fingers. His wounds throb with disinterest. His breath stutters as it goes.

“What the hell do you want me to say,” he asks quietly. “What am I supposed to ask.” He tilts his head back, staring up at the ceiling. “There’s so much I want to say to you.” He breathes out through his mouth, watching and waiting, though the air does not crystallize, does not turn to light.

He wishes Atsumu were here. He wants Atsumu to be alive. He hopes for it, like one nurses a cold by the hearth, rubbing their hands together in the unlikely event that the heat will transfer.

“Then say it,” says the king, who has never had to ask for anything in his life. In this moment, Shouyou hates him. Shouyou hates him more than anyone. Shouyou wants to go back to being five and six and seven, when his life was denoted in the sights and sounds of summer, and every secret he peeled back had an underside. Shouyou wants to go back to that eyeless December.

“Say it,” the old king shrugs, and the world shrugs with him, like he has hefted it all upon one shoulder. He acts like he has done everything for his son with the sharp, ungrateful smile, although all he has ever done is take. “Say the damn thing, Shouyou. We haven’t got all day. Say it.”

Oh, what he would give to be young again. Shouyou cranes his neck to the side, feeling the bones shift beneath his skin. His hair falls into his eyes. He never did get around to cutting it. He never did get around to that second dance under the stars, or that second kiss, or that second chance at happiness, or whatever the poets call it. But he made the choice to walk into this room. He ignored Oikawa Tooru. History held his face in its hands, and told him to look away, and he stuck his head in its mouth. So whatever consequences await him, here, in the sacred space between the past and the present, will be his to bear, and his to carry forward.

  
⚜

  
The first rule of being a prince: don’t ask questions you won’t get the answers to.

“What did you do to me?”

Write your answers down in cursive on the sheet. You have thirty seconds. You have thirty years.

“When I was—”

Try again.

“My own father, the previous king—”

Try harder.

“The first time— “

The first time was an accident. They were visiting a neighboring kingdom, and Shouyou was in the butterfly garden. Someone pushed him over while they were playing catch, and in a moment of surprise, he burnt their arm off, then their head. It was a child. She was ten, the daughter of a rich politician. Her parents gave the king grief until the king came to him, grieving, with a small procession of soldiers.

“But Solis has never been strong. When I saw them from the outer wall, marching through the forest towards us, I panicked. I thought: what if they kill someone? What if they kill me?

Oikawa Tooru didn’t want to help; he said it was boring. What he actually meant was that he thought the king was a coward, and that there was a way to resolve this peacefully, if he took it. The other court mages were not learned in the offensive arts. They spent most of their time fixing tapestries and trying to poison the librarians. They were good people, who had lived good lives, who had families to go back to and girls to kiss and boys with hands to hold.

“But you. You were there, and you were scared out of your mind.”

And that was a good thing?

“Fear made you easy to control. So we used it.”

And then you erased the memory. And then you erased his memories.

“Yes.”

Twenty seven times.

The second rule of being a prince: don’t ask for things you don’t deserve.

Shouyou uncurls his fists for long enough to inhale. One breath in, one breath out. Lungs open, lungs close. His chest is snapping under the weight of all this reckoning. His heart is grieving.

“And you thought this was normal. You looked at all those bodies and you thought this was okay.”

“I never thought it was okay. I hated it. But every time, we were led to the precipice of war. And Solis could not have war. You understand this, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I know that you fucked me over.”

“Shouyou.”

He didn’t come here in search of an apology. There is little point in demanding remunerations from someone who is this close to the end of the line; their hands are empty, their skin is cold. What good does it do for the world if the gods say sorry for all the blood they have spilled in the sea? The water is still red. The people are still statues. Medusa’s head still hangs, a lovely Christmas ornament, from someone’s clenched fist.

But he had always hoped there was a reason. He had always wanted to believe in the fundamental good of all the world.

The third rule of being a prince: if there’s a hole in your head in your chest in your heart, don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. It’ll go away.

It never went away. He stopped being seven and eight and nine, and his tenth birthday came and went in a shower of gifts and enchantments, and Sakusa taught him about politics and war and economics while he learned how to swing a sword like the key to destroying the universe, how to sneak out of the castle without being yelled at, how to talk to people who weren’t Sakusa and Kageyama and Oikawa, and he stopped spending nights lying in bed, sleepless, wondering what he had ever done to merit the specter behind his closed eyelids, and he stopped letting his misery consume him from the inside out, started letting it consume him from the inside only, like a plant being eaten away at from the xylem, first the cell walls breaking, then the visible shell of the stalk, he started acting like the prince he knew he was expected to grow into, started riding horses and reading literature and talking less to people who weren’t Sakusa and Kageyama and Oikawa, who were afraid of him, who didn’t know that he had seen the face of a pale, unsmiling god and lost the key to the universe in its wake, and still it never went away. Loss sat in his heart with its knees drawn to its chest. Loss stayed.

The fourth rule of being a prince: trust blindly. Trust wrongly. You will grow from this process; you will.

“They say you become your parents when you grow up. But every time I tried to see something in you worth looking up to, you turned away. I wanted to believe that, in spite of all my misgivings, you wanted the best for me. I wanted to be wanted as a son.”

Shouyou doesn’t take his eyes off the king, even as his voice gets harder and sharper and harder and sharper, and everything in his chest begins to rise. It is that sound again. The ocean, crawling up the starry white beach like it is trying to escape from itself.

The king meets his gaze like a square peg shoved into a round hole.

“I always wanted to pass you my crown,” he says wistfully.

The crown on his head begins to slip. On unstable foundations, even the steadiest of objects will fall. Lower your center of gravity. Widen your stance. Pour your soul down the drain and hope that it comes out looking like a better version of itself, that it emerges with hands for holding and teeth for tearing apart.

Shouyou crosses the room in three strides. He drags the king out of his high chair, his hand bunched in the fabric of his coat. There is blood everywhere. His blood, the king’s blood, blood from a family with chipped teeth. They have always been like this. Dysfunctional. Selfish.

“I don’t want your fucking crown,” he spits, every breath of air another cut on his lip. The moon has slid out of the pillow of the sky, and she illuminates the sides of their faces; Shouyou’s trembling mouth, the king’s vacant eyes. As the king is lifted off the ground, his wine glass shatters on the floor beside him. Glass flies in a loose arc through the air.

It hurts like a bitch. These cuts and these bones and this frail human body, the way it absorbs pain like a sponge, the way it clings to its scars. Every detail is another knife in his chest, the old memory of happiness twisting itself deeper and deeper into his flesh. This is what it means to be alive, Shouyou finds himself thinking. This is the body cut open.

The king laughs wildly. “Then who will take it?”

His fingers scrabble for purchase on Shouyou’s neck. His hand is slick with blood, Shouyou realizes, and it makes him sick, everything about this is sick, when he told Oikawa he wanted to know what had happened to him in his terrible and turbulent childhood he had not meant let my father die in my hands. He had meant tell me what happened. Someone tell him. Don’t show it to him, get him away from the blood, get him away from the horror of knowing heaven is a dream and a half away. He doesn’t want to know anymore. He’s had enough.

And yet here he is.

“I don’t know,” Shouyou says, his own voice unrecognizable. “I don’t want to know. You killed so many people, and for what?” He shakes the king sharply, or perhaps he is already shaking, he feels like a room on fire. “Why did you do this to me? Why the hell did you do any of it?”

His throat is slippery with blood. His skin is ruined, his nightshirt ruined, Shouyou is a ruined boy. Like the child who has seen the dead rat in the grass, and had their innocence stolen away. He will never be lovely again.

“I was sad,” his father whispers.

“Bullshit.”

“Fuyumi—”

Shouyou is convinced he is living in a world underwater. Everything feels like too much and too little at once, reality pulsing at his temples one moment, waving half a mile away in the next. His father’s voice reaches him through a filter of time and distance, swimming through the underbelly of the universe to reach his side.

The fifth rule of being a prince: don’t lie.

“I don’t want to hear it. I don’t care. Don’t try to make me pity you.”

Hiroto laughs, but it’s more of a cackle. More of a wheeze, more air than sound; there’s almost nothing left to him. Blood spurts from his mouth and Shouyou’s toes curl, the red is black, the black is telling him to run.

“And what,” Hiroto continues, growing younger in the moonlight like a magic trick gone wrong. The wrinkles are fading, his hair turning from gray to glossy black, his acne sweeping across his face, then vanishing altogether. “After all this, are you going to let your own father die?” He hangs, suspended in mid-air, clawing at Shouyou’s white shirt with the bright red hands of a sinner. “I don’t want to die, Shouyou.” It almost sounds like he’s whistling, like he’s calling for a pet to come home. Come back, away from the garden, daddy’s got your favorite treats. Treats and water and hugs. Hugs and kisses. “Don’t leave me like this.”

His mother once said forgiveness was a favor to the universe. His mother believed that the world was a fundamentally good place and that people, when given the chance, would always walk into the light. She was the kind of idealistic that was so pure, it hurt to watch her talk. She would have given the world a lung, if that was what it needed to stay alive. So when the world needed two, she let hers go.

Hinata Shouyou has never forgiven himself for anything. Not for the unmarked grave, not for the hands on the wall. Not for accepting the white lies the castle fed him, of golden apples and princes sweet and kind. Shouyou has never forgiven himself for moving past all the bright and terrible things that happened to him when he was a child, even though there was really nothing else he could have done. Ignorance was a survival strategy. He hated it. He hated himself.

Maybe Hinata Shouyou has to forgive himself. Maybe the sins of your parents aren’t yours. Maybe hatred consumes you in the exact same way that love does, and you’re all too busy staring at the face in the sky, to realize you’ve all wound up at the end of the line.

So here they are. The end of the line. His father coughs his lungs right out of him, and Shouyou holds him up like a prize, like something to be examined under the stars. There’s blood on the floor, blood on the walls. Surrounded by hundreds of paintings, lovingly asked for, lovingly resurfaced from memory, he finds, for the first time in many, many years, that he is sad.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Shouyou tells him quietly. It’s the truth.

Once, a long time ago, his father took him into the city. They snuck out of the castle at dawn, and emerged on the other side of the forest into a crisp fall morning. The marketplace was the site of a festival. People wanted to shake his hand. People wanted to touch his hair. Someone handed him a bag of apples, and while he plucked a shiny red fruit from the bag, his father paid the storekeeper generously, refusing to accept his change.

News had spread far and wide of the boy with the breakable hands, but the real thing was so. So sweet, almost a little shy, though when you waved at him he would smile big enough to break planets over your head. He was the first darling of the castle, after all. It thus followed that he would be the first darling of the kingdom, with those charming eyes and that incorruptible faith. Kindness came naturally to him.

They wandered through the city all day, his father running the occasional errand or speaking to a storekeeper with a hole in their display front, while Shouyou played with the plants on the windowsill or spoke to the birds in their birdcages. His father bought several objects of value: a new scabbard, a new belt, a pair of gloves. But he also bought Shouyou a quill, an expensive one, with his name carved into the side. At the end of the day, when the sun was beginning to set, they passed by a field of blue flowers. Shouyou wanted to stop to admire the flowers. His father told him to hurry up.

Miya Atsumu once said you could kill a man in self-defense. Miya Atsumu once said he who makes the first move is destined to be the first to fall, because evil does not come from the world around you; evil does not grow in the trees or at the bottom of the ocean; evil comes from the heart. From selfishness, from cruelty, from sadness. Miya Atsumu once knew a kind of sadness.

It is hard for Shouyou to acknowledge that his father has hurt him. He was never taught how to recognize hurt like this, years-old, burnt into the skin of the decades. He does not know how to clear the fog.

But he knows this: his father is dying, and fast. Shouyou can see it in the slack-jawed wet-eyed shape of him, the way his hands are beginning to slow. “Don’t you dare go anywhere,” he rasps, and Shouyou can’t find it in himself to bite back. He’s all worn out. He’s run the marathon, he’s come back from the war. He both loves him and hates him and this sentence will never be broken, this sentence will never see itself in pieces. Perhaps this is what they meant by the sins of your forefathers. They do not necessarily become yours. But they are you, in the way that habits become person and person becomes moon.

Isn’t it nice, then, that love and hate come intertwined. Like two halves of an ocean. Same salt. Different legacy.

Hinata Shouyou watches his father die.

And yet in the last moments, before all is lost to their household gods, who they have long since forgotten, who never believed in anything to begin with, his father finds the strength to commit one last act of blasphemy. He puts the crown on his son’s head. He puts it there.

“I meant it,” he says, barely there, like a dream you’ve just awoken from. “When I said I wanted to pass you the crown.” His head lolls in circles. His eyes grow dull.

“You would have made a better king than me.”

Forgiveness is not a clear path through the sky. It is never ‘I forgive you, be my friend again’ or ‘I forgive you, so I will save your life’ or ‘I forgive you, so stop squeezing your own throat like if you do it for long enough, you’ll accidentally wring your neck’. Heaven is not the dream you had when you were seven.

Maybe the body by the side of the road speaks. Maybe it says hello, nice to meet you, my name is Hinata Shouyou. Maybe it tells you it hates itself, and you are left floundering for a way to connect the dots again, to bring a light back to its eyes. But what need do we have for the sun when the world is its own source of arson?

He doesn’t want to check for a pulse, but he does it anyway. There’s no point in letting his father suffer any more than he already has; Shouyou doesn’t want to witness it, and he doesn’t want it to become true. He lays the body down in the throne, reaches as close as he can without getting any farther. There is no pulse. Already the limbs are slackening, the jaw falling open, tears trickling down his cheeks. It mingles with the blood. It turns brackish.

The sixth rule of being a prince.

The crown feels too heavy on his head. He doesn’t want it. He dislikes the way it makes him feel, like he’s tilting sideways in a world that’s already on the edge of falling right off into nothing. Like they live on a flat planet. On one side: sunshine and birdsong. On the other: the tongues of hell.

It’s all too much for him. He can barely remember when the night started. It must have been several years ago; perhaps when Sakusa first brought in his vipers, perhaps when Yachi and Kiyoko started seeing each other in the garden, perhaps during his first lesson on survival with Oikawa, or his last. Time loses meaning as Shouyou allows himself a last glance around the tiny, caged-in room behind the throne. A hundred pairs of eyes follow his every move. Bile rises at the back of his throat.

Each painting must have taken months to finish, each artist must have sold their soul. How much did this man love his family, and how little did he truly care? In spite of all their childhood grievances, in spite of everything Sakusa said, his father never kept him safe from anything. The world never wanted him dead. It was dead from the start, and Shouyou had merely thought it was living.

He picks up a shard of glass. It cuts his finger, but he barely feels a thing; he holds it up to the window, peering through it at the unsmiling moon.

Then he bows his head, not in apology or deference, but out of respect for some long lost platonic ideal, and exits the room of mourning.


	17. Chapter 17

Don’t cry. Don’t cry, Shouyou.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [where the shadow ends](https://open.spotify.com/track/3RVaTVlkDG16YQhl8xLGwm?si=WzwFb10US0S_foy0m8KBdg)

While all of this has been going down, which the story acknowledges is a lot, a lot has been going down, Miya Atsumu has been having the time of his life. As in, he almost dies. Several times. We know about the first three instances of this fascinating almost-dying phenomenon, which take place, in chronological order, in the closet, on the balcony, and in the north tower. The last one has yet to even be properly resolved as of right now. The prince merely burnt the wound shut, like a letter tossed in a bonfire. Underneath it all, the flesh is still ruined. The place where knife met skin is still gaping open, like a friend of bad influence, the poison spreading.

Miya Atsumu is thinking about whether he would rather die from poisoning or self-inflicted trauma play set in a big, collapsing castle, when his old friends of bad influence catch up to him. There are three of them, as mentioned before. There are, Atsumu hazards, somewhere between six and twenty-five knives involved. He doesn’t really have plans on living at this point, though he doesn’t really want to die either, so it’s all a bit of a hassle, really. He sighs as he pulls his sword out of his scabbard. A wounded man with a sword is a safety hazard. All the better for these three, who are, themselves, larger hazards. Hazards to the prince’s life. Nasty fuckers. They’re not going anywhere.

So he fights, you know? He does what he has always done best, except with less of that suave confidence and more of that reckless abandon, which his seventeen-year-old self was so well known for. He swings his sword, and then he swings it again, and he probably swings it again? He’s not sure? He assumes this happens. He assumes the floor is where it is supposed to be, which is beneath him.

Three men become two, and two men become one, and Atsumu is about to pat himself on the back for being wonderful, when he fucks it all up. Ah, he has fallen over. Everything is terrible again. Lying on his back, he has never felt more exposed, or more ready to close his eyes.

The last man approaches him, knives at the ready; there are like five. Or maybe there are ten. Atsumu’s head is swimming, doing an elaborate stroke whose name he does not know. He barely remembers anything beyond the last twenty minutes. So this is what is left: the knives, the murderer, and the prince. He hopes Shouyou has reached the throne room safely, he hopes his father is dead. Dear god, let his father be dead. Shouyou does not need to know everything. Sometimes it truly is better to die in the dark.

Like now? It occurs to him, bleakly, that he didn’t get that last kiss. He had been toying with the idea, had been looking forward to it up until the point at which he threw a machete at the figurative chandelier of his life and the whole thing fell apart. Atsumu decides that he hates the concept of truth. What does it mean anyway, who is it for? There is no such thing as objectivity. Lies are inconvenient truths. Kisses are candies for children with rotting teeth.

He licks his lips. Dry, dry, everything dry and bloodless. The ceiling is doing a conservative little waltz now. It is taunting him. And where is all this light from, when did the room become so bright? His vision glitches as the man raises his arms, like someone trying to pluck a holy sword from a chunk of rock.

“Ah,” he laughs, or jitters, or maybe he does both. His voice echoes in his own head like some kind of fucked-up hymn for people who have been forsaken by god. “This must be a trick of the light, too.”

The sword falls. Atsumu braces for impact. He, well. He closes his eyes? Don’t ruin his face, at least. He wants to look presentable at his funeral.

  
⚜

  
Okay, he fucked up. For one, he’s not dead. For another, he has no idea how the previous statement is remotely possible, seeing as Atsumu has, up until now, been sporting a destroyed immune system and a destroyed body and a destroyed heart, soul, spirit, et cetera. If you asked him to describe what happened moments ago he would tell you there was a huge flash of light and his ear felt very hot, and then there were birds and butterflies and the silver silhouette of a white fox springing forth from said hot ear. And then the man fell over. His name was Kintoki. Atsumu never liked that name.

He’s still lying on the floor, trying to come to terms with the fact that he isn’t dead, when Oikawa Tooru ducks in through the doorway. He looks great. Atsumu tries to flip him off, but his arm won’t listen to him, and he gets a surge of deja vu for that, too. Remember the whole thing with the hippogriff? Maybe it started there. It probably did.

Oikawa Tooru squats beside him. Atsumu feels very dead.

“Asshole,” says Atsumu, refusing to acknowledge how dead he feels.

Oikawa flips his hair attractively. “This asshole is here to save your life.”

He does that. He looks awful for someone who hopped off the parapet ten minutes ago, which is to say that he looks wonderful, immaculate, and very put-together, but Atsumu does not know this. Atsumu is trying to ignore Oikawa’s comments, which range from ‘you look like shit, haha’ to ‘wow, Shouyou really did a number on you’. It ticks him off that Oikawa refers to Shouyou as Shouyou. It has not fully registered that Oikawa is to Shouyou what large mammals are to baby chicks whose parents have forgotten about their existence.

Shouyou did what he could. This means Shouyou burned his shoulder off, but he did it out of concern, and Atsumu didn’t bleed to death in the north tower, so really, what can he say? Atsumu has never been a victim. He is a perpetrator.

He tells Oikawa as much. “If it were not for him,” he mumbles, face-down on the floor like a rich man receiving a suntan while Oikawa prods and pokes at his shoulder. “I would be dead.”

“If it were not for the generous Oikawa Tooru,” the generous Oikawa Tooru copies. “You would also be dead.”

This is true. Atsumu does not like admitting to weakness, but perhaps it is time he accepted his vulnerabilities. Or perhaps he should take a swing at Oikawa Tooru, who has clearly known about everything from the start. That sly, shiny motherfucker.

The sly shiny motherfucker has brought him his earring. This pisses him off more. It suggests that Oikawa, who has known about everything from the start, is also distantly sympathetic, and if he is sympathetic, then that means Atsumu has failed to live up to his name. He is not eating the sun or putting things back where they should be. He is dying.

Or, well, not anymore. Oikawa steeples his fingers as Atsumu sticks his earring back in.

“What is that thing to you?” He gestures at it.

Atsumu regards him with suspicion. Oikawa has a way about him, like he is always on the verge of either killing you or throwing you out the window. It sets him on edge. “I could ask the same of yours.”

It’s a family thing. A history thing. A ‘the Miya twins were born as two halves of a whole, so they each got one earring, too’ thing, though he doesn’t think Oikawa cares, or deserves to know.

Oikawa hums. “What is the prince to you?”

“My business. My person.” Atsumu stands up.

Oikawa tells him in a singing falsetto to go to the throne room. Atsumu scowls, because he still doesn’t like being told what to do, especially when it comes to loud, glittery immortals with shiny teeth. In addition to the earring, Oikawa has brought him his coat. This pisses him off further. He buttons it up to his chin, feeling for the jewel on the collar. Oikawa watches him smugly, like an evil grandparent.

Atsumu frowns. “Why don’t you go to him?”

“Well, I do not think he wants to see me now,” replies Oikawa, the smug evil grandparent.

“And he will want to see me? Or no, actually,” Atsumu dusts off his pants out of habit, even though everything is already ruined. “How do you know he’s okay? Did you ask?”

Oikawa ducks back out of the room, gesturing for Atsumu to follow. “You will understand when you get there,” he says, cryptic for the sake of being cryptic. What he means is that he has seen the knife bleed the old king dry, in the words of the poets, but Atsumu does not know this either. For once, Atsumu is in the dark.

Atsumu sighs. “I hate you after all.”

They take a different route back. The old court mage, now ex-court mage, though again, Atsumu remains under the impression that he is the king’s evil henchman, is familiar with these tunnels. Atsumu can see this clear as day. He swallows his anger with a lashing of gratitude, for the earring and the coat, and the fact that he can feel his arms again. Oikawa has done the minimalist’s job, which involves repairing what is broken, and salvaging what can be immediately brought back. Atsumu will not die. But it is advisable for him to visit a medic, or another magic-user, when this is all over.

When this is all over. What does that mean, where is he going? He had expected this job to be a breeze, but he had expected the breeze to take him away when it was over. Like a sudden cold: fever, short breath, and then death.

“For what it is worth,” says Oikawa, dragging his bare hands along the wall. His gauntlets are gone, which Atsumu finds funny, but he does not ask. Atsumu has been feeling uncomfortably hot since he got to his feet again, perhaps due to the heat, perhaps due to the fire. Oikawa seems indifferent, but then and again. Oikawa is probably secretly a god.

Atsumu steps outside first. “What.”

“I am not a fan of you either.” Oikawa follows him out into the fiery undergrowth of the castle.

“I’m not going to ‘take him away’, you know.”

“Are you sure?”

Atsumu stretches his arms above his head, admiring the fact of his life. His old friends have knives and magic and anger. But court mages have blessings. And Atsumu, being the acquaintance of one, is a little luckier in turn.

“Yeah,” he says lightly, starting up the stairs. Oikawa watches him from the hallway on the second floor, beside which is the ballroom, with the star and the song and the secret. This castle will fall. He said it before, and he’ll say it again. It is the end of the end of the end. They will get no more red string. No more second chances.

“I need him. But I won’t take him away. I’ll come back.”

Looking at Oikawa’s hard, timeless eyes, Atsumu wonders, again, just how dazzling Hinata Shouyou must have been in his youth, to enchant a monster as exquisite as this. Then he turns, and heads for the throne room, where that same boy has not dazzled anything, but rather let it fade into darkness.

  
⚜

  
Canis looked better. The throne room in Canis had tall, gorgeous windows shaped like candles, and between each one was a marble column, atop which sat carved cherubs, fat and smiling. If you walked into the throne room at the right hour, which changed from season to season, you would be greeted with sloping bars of sunlight, cutting perpendicularly across the carpet. The floor was gray marble. The ceiling was black, with stars. In the spring, this was best witnessed in the early hours of the morning. In the summer, it was the afternoon.

Solis is burning. With that in mind, it should matter terribly little to Atsumu whether its throne room is an aesthetic sensibility, or a mistake, and yet there is something about the way the sky looks through the glass that amplifies his anxieties. Both castles have the same red carpet. Although the one here is trimmed with gold, not silver, and falls across an expanse of white marble.

He looks up. The mural on the ceiling returns his interest with hooded eyes. He sees the Medusa, the soldiers, the swell of the sea at her feet. It is both disarming and strangely familiar, how the story seems to parallel the one he has lived himself. Her snake-hair is not terrifying. Yet they want it to be.

He thinks it distasteful, then lovely, then sad.

When he reaches the end of the room, he, too, sees the absent throne and the red curtain. He has seen the bodies, too, but they do not bother him. The body is merely the casket of the soul. When the casket disintegrates, the soul leaves for an unknowable destination, far across the sea. This is a roundabout way to say that dead people are not people. This is a roundabout way to say he’s done with playing morgue.

Like a puppy waiting for its master to come home, he sits at the foot of the staircase, drawing his knees to his chest and looking down the length of the room. This must be how watchdogs feel, he muses, propping his chin in the palm of his hand. Staring down the wrong side of a blade, a hand, or a staff, teeth bared, hoping that their people will return for them before they run down the mountain. This must be how it feels to hope for someone to come back for you.

  
⚜

  
The spring of his fifth birthday. He’s sitting in a field of blue flowers. He’s braiding his mother’s hair. She wears her hair long in this memory, down to her waist, and Atsumu is terrible at braiding, but he’s learning. Part the hair into three sections. Hold it gently, but firmly. Weave it together, making sure to keep each section distinct. Avoid the tangling, avoid the chain of her silver locket. Avoid the fox-face engraved in the metal.

His mother is telling him a story about her friend. She has orange hair and orange eyes, his mother narrates in a sing-song voice, and yet her magic is that of snow. Like winter had been born in a person instead of the sky. She does not move as she speaks, letting her son keep his eyes on his work. He is learning. He is learning.

We tried to teach each other our magic once, many years ago. But instead of pulling snow out of fire or melting icicles with flames, we made spring. It was fall, I was twenty-two. Suddenly there were flowers sprouting from the dry grass. Weed flowers. They were very beautiful.

Spring. A time of new growth. Green shoots, green hands, green sleeves and a sad song. Where he comes from, this is how they dance. To the tune of the sun’s lyre, their bodies singing, their faces bare. When the saints come marching in, this is how you want to greet them. You want to be seen braiding the hair of your favorite person while she tells you about the people she loves. You want to be in love.

  
⚜

  
It’s spring.

  
⚜

  
There was a book of poems he was fond of when he was a child. The poet who penned it started with a career in describing the common ailment of heartbreak and ended by launching anarchy, which meant most of its contents were confusing at best, and mildly depressing at worst. But one line stayed with him, long after he had moved past poetry into politics. I will come back from the dead for you: it sounded like both a promise and a threat. This was a familiar state of being. This, he could understand.

Walking out of the room with his dead father, Shouyou sees a familiar figure sitting at the bottom of the stairs, and is reminded immediately of the degrees of loss that make up his existence. Immortality is not a dream, it is the answer to all these weak human tendencies. If you are human, you will be forced to do terrible things. You will see terrible things. Your life will be one extended terrible thing, and at the end of it, god will laugh at you.

And yet, it seems Miya Atsumu has come back from the dead for him.

“I thought you were going to leave me here forever,” Shouyou says, inviting loss back into his life.

Miya Atsumu stands up and turns, slowly, towards him. He has found his red coat, though the top few buttons are unbuttoned. His hair is a mess. There are little fires everywhere, blood on his face, blood on the backs of his hands, which are shaking as he curls and uncurls them repeatedly, and yet even now: Shouyou has never seen anyone more beautiful. He wonders if hell is as nice as this. He wonders if hell knows what it has missed out on.

He tries to smile. He’s not sure if it works, but he tries.

“I guess not,” he continues, light as morning, as Atsumu’s eyes follow the line of his throat, circled with blood, down the front of his shirt, also bloody, the lines of his arms, smeared, to his hands. His gaze stops there, and Shouyou tucks his hands behind his back, embarrassed. Too late. Atsumu is looking at him from the bottom of the stairs as if he has let someone die in this room. As if it is Atsumu’s fault that he wound up like this.

It isn’t, though. Sure, he snuck in. He told them about the fire. But Shouyou was the one who got the wrong father.

“If you wanted to know,” he looks off to the side, where the sky is beginning to lighten. For a moment, it slips his mind that he has assisted in someone’s death, which is to say that he has killed them, which is to say that he is a murderer. For a moment he thinks: how beautiful. “My father is dead.” Ah, yes. The fact comes back to him, clear as day, and it’s knives in his chest all over again. He thinks he might be growing a garden of knives in his rib cage. Between the lungs, where the heart might have been: nothing but knives. Knives for culling and knives for numbing. “He was dying when I arrived.” Shouyou toes the carpet with his boot. “I didn’t stop it.”

When he looks up again, Atsumu is climbing the steps towards him. Shouyou takes a step back, his pulse skittering. He’s not on edge, though he’s terrified; he’s long since fallen off that ocean promontory. The water at the bottom of the well is dark and starless.

“What.” Shouyou feels small again. He hates this. He hates how his mind goes to Atsumu, angry, snarling in the warm light of his room, and wonders if they are about to relive that history. “What,” he repeats.

Give me a word. Say the wrong thing. Let me be mad at you.

Once, there was a boy who had so much power, he didn’t know what to do with it. But his father knew what to do with it, and the boy didn’t know what was happening, so he let it all happen even though it scared the life out of him. Once there was a boy who had so much power, he fucked it all up. He got everyone killed. He fucked them all up.

The boy watches the distance between him and the other boy disappear. He watches the other boy walk towards him. The other boy is tall and sad and gorgeous. The other boy has a citrine smile with a rough, crooked edge, and a laugh like a dying star.

He stops, an arm’s length away. He tries to relax his shoulders, awkwardly, and fails. Then, very quietly:

I’m here.

It pisses him off. It pisses him off that Atsumu doesn’t ask if he’s okay, or if he’s dying, or if he wants a fucking hug or something. Shouyou wants a hug. Shouyou wants to go back to winter. But none of these things are attainable. Only the boy is left. Only Atsumu, standing in the dark, watching him bleed.

The poet’s way out is _bleed with me._ The romantic’s way out is _run away with me._ Hinata Shouyou’s way is this: the first rule says no crying. He’s already broken this once, though if Atsumu doesn’t look hard enough, he might miss the redness in his eyes. The second rule says no telling him how it felt to watch your father die, because that would be selfish, and selfishness is a cardinal sin. But the third rule doesn’t say don’t hug him, so what Shouyou does is he walks forward, and he sort of leans up on his tip-toes, the way boys who are always chasing the long skirt of heaven have to, and he puts his arms around Atsumu’s neck. It’s like this. Hinata Shouyou has had enough. He doesn’t want to think about everything that’s dead, and he doesn’t want to think about everyone that’s dead, and he doesn’t want to think, the end. He probably hates himself. But it’s like that sometimes. It just fucking is.

At first Atsumu seems surprised. Then he seems afraid, as if he’s done something wrong again, but what more can one boy do? At least he didn’t go off and ruin everything. At least he’s still here. It’s the kind of thing that makes you want to hold onto someone, object permanence and the meaning of the universe, all rolled into one person. It’s Atsumu’s hammering heartbeat against Shouyou’s skin, the startled sound he makes, the way his hands come to rest, slowly, on Shouyou’s back. He squeezes back. He sighs.

The boy you danced with under the stars has come back from the dead for you. The boy you kissed under the stars comes back from the dead for you. The boy comes back from the dead in place of your father, who you killed, who is sitting in that room in a throne you used to dream of touching. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Every miracle comes with a price. In which case, perhaps this is his.

The crown slides off his head and clatters loudly to the floor. Shouyou wonders how he must look now, in his bloody nightshirt and his bloody pants, with a ring around his neck like a body who’s just walked out of a hanging. Maybe Shouyou has come back from the dead, too. Or maybe this is hell, maybe they have already left the castle behind. Atsumu presses his face into Shouyou’s neck, his breath warm and fleeting. How nice it is to have someone to hold onto, after all this. How nice it is to be here.

I’m here. He’s here. We are all, in this moment, still breathing.

It’s funny how fast things change without you realizing them. One moment you are holding the champagne, and the next the whole bottle has broken over your head. One moment you are holding the knife, and the next the knife is in your back. One moment you are a child, and the next moment you are a child. And the next moment you are a child. Every time you come back to this world, in this skin, you are still the same child you were before. You will never be terrified of nothing.

But this, too, is one of those things that comes with age. Not the slow reclination into your predetermined fate, but a violent caterwauling about faith.

Atsumu mumbles the words against his neck. “Are you crying, your highness?”

Shouyou pulls away to stare at him. “Don’t call me that.”

“Ah, my apologies. It was a slip of the tongue.” He is devastating. He has eyebags like bruises, and his eyebags have eyebags, and Shouyou wants to take him home. “A trick of the light, if you will.”

But who has the right? It is not fair that Atsumu can take his words and give them back to him, the same, but kinder; that Atsumu knows how to hold a sword like the key to the universe. It is not fair that this is the boy that was hiding in the closet. It’s not fair that this is the boy he hurt, even though he hurt him back in the end. An eye for an eye makes the world go blind. Shouyou is out of small mercies.

Can he take him home? Never mind that; does he want to? Atsumu frowns at him, his lovely red mouth lopsided.

So he kisses him. Atsumu is surprised at first, then pliant, and it kills him, how he leans into the kiss like he’s making up for lost time, bending lower so Shouyou doesn’t have to reach further. It is nothing like the night in the ballroom and yet not everything has changed, Atsumu’s breath hitching, his shy, boyish habit of asking for more than he knows what to do with. When they pull apart, he looks at him with heavy-lidded eyes and says _Oikawa told me about the—_ but Shouyou doesn’t want to hear about Oikawa, so he kisses him again, and this time Atsumu’s hands come up to his face, brushing behind his ears, smearing the blood across his cheeks. Atsumu shuts up and lets him in, and now his hands are sliding along Shouyou’s shoulders, feeling down the front of his shirt, now there’s a revelation in the way he presses their bodies together.

It should feel like fire. It should feel like the storm in your teeth in your head. Instead, it’s salvation.

“You’re so cruel to me, Shouyou.”

“Shh.” The world is the size of a fist. Atsumu sighs when he tugs on his lower lip. The world is the size of a fist.

He knows. They have most certainly overstayed the welcome of every deity in the sky. But let him have this moment. Let him have the stark immediacy of youth. Because it all goes away so fast. First the dream, then the kingdom, then the fragile thing between their hands. If he can have Atsumu for this minute, and the next, and the next, then maybe he will be allowed to have him for all the ones to follow.

  
⚜

  
One day, you will meet someone. One day, someone will arrive from the other side of the world. One day stars.

  
⚜

  
(He walks Shouyou into a wall and leaves him there, dazed and breathless, for a heartbeat of time. The room behind the absent throne is a morgue now, nothing pretty, but the paintings on the wall are disarming all the same. A hundred tiny people stare back at him from a hundred golden frames; Shouyou in a sailor uniform, peering into a lake; Shouyou holding a wooden sword, looking nervous and annoyed and afraid; Shouyou, in a suit several sizes too big for him, sitting awkwardly at the long table in the great hall. He takes one off the wall, for posterity.

Hiroto the Vanquisher watches all this happen through vacant eyes. Rigor mortis is still hours away, and his body is soft and bendable, like a thing deflated, as Atsumu stands over him in his gold throne. It is worthless now, as is the rest of him. But it could have saved a city.

Atsumu considers hitting him. He considers punching the skin and flesh bag, the empty casket of the body and then slicing it open down the middle. His hand goes to the hilt of his sword, almost on instinct; he turns the idea over in his head. But the underside is blank. All he finds is his own reflection, which regards him with pity. Don’t do it. He’s not worth it.

If the poets have not lied, then this is the man who loved Hinata Fuyumi, queen of Solis, queen of snow. This is the man whose grief was so great, it swept across the land like an ocean.

For every sliver of hatred which eats away at Shouyou’s heart and is torn apart by an equal and opposing sliver of affection, Atsumu hates him harder. He hates him for the killing and the burning and the bleeding. He hates him for his dead parents, his dead family, his dead twin. He hates him for every time he made his son feel like he was Medusa hiding behind a black shroud, because this is the story Atsumu has seen. This is what drove Hiroto the Vanquisher to the end of his line. After everything, after everything he made him do, he still feared him.

Fuck you, Atsumu thinks. Revenge is pointless now, in this room with the single square of moonlight, jagged and half-obscured by the festering body of its ruler. But the anger is raw. It creeps, ugly and unassuming, across the flat surface of his heart, haunted by the boy with the golden eyes outside. The anger is permanent. The frustration is temporary. The disappointment is cutting, and leaves a mark.

“You could have given him the whole damn world,” Atsumu says quietly. “It was right here.” He exhales, not liking the history, not liking the haunting. “Look at all this. You had it all in the palm of your hand.” He nudges at Hiroto the Vanquisher’s foot, and it lolls to the side like a doll pushed over.

“But all you gave him was this.”

The sky is turning to light. The hour of miracles is ending. Shouyou is waiting for him outside, the sleeves of his shirt torn, the sleeve of his heart wounded. So before he leaves, before he lets the room of mourning return to a room of evil, he reaches out, across thirteen years of sadness, and closes the old king’s eyes.)


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [never look away](https://open.spotify.com/track/6W1nhifdBrLkJbrmiwMfIF?si=iOcz8VM8TXKzaCo9QxQFVQ)

Shouyou has remembered that he has pockets in his pants when Atsumu re-emerges from behind the red curtain. He is pinching one black glove between his fingers and trying to pull it onto the other hand. It is not working. There is too much blood on him. The friction keeps getting in the way.

Atsumu bends over to pick up the crown, but when he sees Shouyou tugging pointedly at his hands, his eyes narrowed in concentration, he drops it.

“Stop that,” he says, pulling the half-worn glove off. Shouyou stares at his palms in mild confusion, as if he doesn’t remember where they came from. Atsumu tosses the glove on the floor. He throws the other one away, too, then presses a hand to the glass panel behind him.

Shouyou looks up. “Why?”

Atsumu stares at him blankly. “You don’t need them. There’s nothing to hide.”

“They’re ugly, though.”

“They’re not.”

“They are.”

Atsumu takes one of his hands, pressing his mouth to the flesh of his palm. He leaves a stripe of wet kisses around the tender, bruised flat of it, keeping his eyes on Shouyou the whole time, and Shouyou feels. Hurt? He feels like he’s being cut open. He wishes Atsumu would stop looking at him like that while he does that thing with his tongue because it’s horrible and confusing and makes his knee throb. This is wrong. Shouyou is horrible and confusing. Shouyou’s hands are gross. They’re fucked-up.

“See?” Atsumu says when he’s done, his voice a drop of salt in the ocean. Shouyou’s heart is beating so hard, he’s convinced it is going to stop soon. Perhaps it would be better if it stopped. This would be a good time to go, he decides. Right here. Atsumu wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, and it should be disgusting, Shouyou should be disgusted; but he’s gone. He’s heels over head. He’s ruined.

“I’m not dead. Nothing happened.” Atsumu lets go of his wrist. The loss of pressure is a fundamental loss of light. “They’re beautiful hands.”

Shouyou would be embarrassed if he weren’t in mourning. Luckily the human heart can only take so much, and therefore so little. He sighs, staring at the floor. The cold marble stares back.

“You’re not your father. I take back what I said then, too,” Atsumu calls after him, a moment later.

Shouyou doesn’t look over his shoulder. He hears footsteps behind him, the sound of following. “Do you want to keep your crown?”

Atsumu shrugs to himself. “I’m going to take it, just in case.”

Shouyou keeps his heart to himself as he walks down the red carpet, studying the heft of it in his palm, the irreparable ways in which it has changed. Everything is awful, but not everything is lost. Everything catches up to you eventually, but not everything that nips at your heels is asking for your head on a silver platter. He reaches the doors at the other end of the room and pulls one open, peeking into the world beyond this present moment.

Atsumu peers over his head. Shouyou hates this. Why is he so tall, why is he so pretty?

“So, uh.” Atsumu looks down at him. “Can you do something about the fire?”

Shouyou stares back blankly. “No.”

Atsumu puts his chin on his head, laughing like a house full of lava. “Are we going to burn to death?”

“Have a little faith in me, Atsumu. Please.”

  
⚜

  
As the story continues, Oikawa Tooru wanders into the forest with a rolled-up flying carpet tucked under his arm. He did not steal it. It is his severance pay. He is on his way to a vacation getaway in the eastern hills, where the rich and young go to die. Also, he wants to get his nails done, and he would like a new pair of shoes; he might want to get another piercing. When that is all said and done, he may return to Shouyou’s side with a new outfit and a new smile, because the boy’s life is one he has a vested interest in, even if it is not his. Like mother, like son. Both have charmed Oikawa’s charmless soul. Both have proven his unsmiling god wrong.

In the meantime, Solis is burning. The castle is melting, its stone foundations giving way to the softness of fire. Solis has been burning all night, like a prayer for a faceless god, its gold epaulettes melting into a pool of fine, detail-less glitter, and yet the fire does not seem interested in them. It does not reach out to lick their teeth. It does not try to touch the sacred thing under their skin.

Anyway, it is not like Shouyou can do anything. His is a magic of light, magic from the sun, a planet stuck in his throat. But god fucking damnit, he wants to live.

So they run. They run down to the second floor, where the fire has not yet run its course. They pass by the ballroom with its marble floor and its tiny opaque door, embedded in a glass menagerie within which Shouyou had danced until his fear looked like a face, and the face looked like a lover’s. From the second-floor parapet, they watch his mother’s rose garden burn. Her flowers wither and die, the green and blue eaten up by a heat-haze of orange. The gazebo stands somberly in the center. Shouyou follows the trajectory of this desecration for as long as he can, looking over his shoulder while Atsumu clears the path ahead, and then they are running through the north wing, where his mother used to spend her afternoons, and it’s bizarre. The pigeons are still in the rafters. In fact the pigeons are everywhere, near the ceiling of the ballroom, pecking morosely at the dead wood on the floor; it seems the pigeons have decided to stay. Shouyou’s thoughts wander briefly to the north tower and its blue ocean, the silver branches of that invisible tree, and then even that is behind them. They pass beneath the royal chambers. In his mind’s eye he imagines each door in this hallway is another; his father’s quarters, Natsu’s, his own. He sees the cream-colored walls of his room, his wooden desk, the quill from his father and the ink pot he had still been using, even after all these years. Then they are running past the library, and for the first time in his life it is clear enough to stare through, its walls flaking, the twelve-foot shelves hissing as their secrets are ripped from their teeth. Never again will anyone read Healing Herbs and Their Favorite Places. Never again will anyone hear of the unmarked grave, or see it, or think of it.

If you want to argue semantics, then the library was where it all began. When Shouyou bumped into him that day and he said ‘the carpet is on fire’, and instead of dealing with it like a reasonable adult, Shouyou dragged him into the heart of this castle. If you want to argue about the definition of truth, then maybe that was when Shouyou realized he was lying. If you want to argue about desire, then maybe it started at the beginning, when the red apple was split in half, and inside of it they found desire.

What were you doing here, Atsumu, what were you looking for? What did you want from me?

The ceiling is slowly reaching down to kiss their heads. The stone pillars are bow-strings, careening sideways, the ground beneath their feet distorting as time itself distorts in the face of holy interference. They turn the corner, down another hallway, Shouyou’s hair flying, warm air in his face, and Atsumu runs ahead, Atsumu clears a path, Atsumu does what all good knights in shining armor do. He keeps running, and he keeps running, and he says: remember when you said I had no one?

You were wrong. I had you, all along, and even before that, before I knew that a marionette’s heart could beat. Before I realized that Pinocchio could climb out of that wooden shell if he was foolish enough. And then realized that I would give up everything in this life, if it meant that you would forgive me.

  
⚜

  
You found a boy. He was sitting by the window, his head against the glass, one leg on the ledge while the other brushed against the floor. He did not look like any other boy you had seen in your life, though you had seen all sorts of boys, many of them beautiful, many of them sad. He looked, in a strange twist of events, like you. You had the same bright eyes, the same unsteady gaze. The same disquieting air of loss.

The boy wore a starched white shirt with rows of gold soutache, secured at the collar with a jewel. A red and gold sash ran across his chest. Draped across one shoulder was a red cloak with a fur trim, while the other, exposed to the light, was adorned with ornamental epaulettes. His hair was the color of fire. It rustled as he reached up with a gloved hand, to tuck a strand behind his ear.

For a moment, you could not breathe or blink, for fear that the sound of your lungs deflating would wake him. For a moment, you thought you might be asleep.

You found a boy. The boy stared out the window with a strange, distant expression, his eyes soft, his lashes golden in the sunlight. The boy was a statue poured from gold, something precious, something even the heavens would be jealous of in their armchairs and their gazebos.

You found a boy. The boy found you. You found a boy, and in that singular moment, all the other boys in the world were forgotten. From then on, though you would not realize this for months to come, it would be just you and this boy, this lovely medusa, nursing slim flutes of wine while you walked in circles around each other on the dance floor, your eyes averted, your eyes red. Who said all princes tell lies? You never wanted to. Not to him.

  
⚜

  
The first time Miya Atsumu was given anything in his life, he was twenty. He was on a mission to kill the old king, and behead the rest of his family. He was on a mission to forgive himself.

The first time Hinata Shouyou let someone into the room in the north tower, he was almost twenty. He was on a mission to kill himself. Not the body, which he had resigned himself to holding onto, but the image of the boy. The image of happiness.

The first time. The second time. The third. One, two, three. Four, five, six.

Seven. Eight— 

  
⚜

  
After all the rumors he’s heard in the castle, Miya Atsumu is disappointed to find that the crown prince is, in fact, human. He had been expecting more based on word of mouth, whose descriptions ranged from ‘something of a walking deity’ to ‘ten-feet-tall’. The prince is handsome as a house on fire, if all the windows have been punched out, and all the people are dead. There are shadows beneath his eyes, and he has a habit of hiding his hands in his pockets or behind his back when he is talking to you. This habit persists. Even now. Even on the thin line between reality and daydream, he sees himself as a safety hazard.

I promise you’re not going to hurt anyone just by being here, Atsumu wants to say, though he doesn’t.

The prince of Solis leans against the outer gate of the castle, his shoulders heaving, his expression obscured by his bangs. Behind his slim, shivering figure, the castle burns, handsome as a house on fire. Tonight everything is a house on fire. What difference is there, after all, between a ruined boy and a ruined house? They are both places to come back to. They are both gorgeous. They are both fleeting in their love for you, like a face on a merry-go-round that comes and goes in waves.

And the sun is rising. He can see it there, a flat wedge of gold above the treetops. It turns everything it touches white. And the sky is made of light.

Atsumu fingers the jewel on his collar absently.

“I have to go back.”

Shouyou looks up.

“To where?”

Atsumu feels for the four corners of the jewel, running the pads of his fingers along each point. It had been given to him on his first day in the castle. It had been held out, like a prize, like a secret. It means he is one of the crown prince’s people, it means he is Shouyou’s. It means that wherever Shouyou goes, so is he expected to follow.

“To where I came from,” he says, then feels silly. “The kingdom of Canis, I mean.” Whatever is left of it.

He doesn’t want to keep talking, but Shouyou seems to be expecting something. His eyes are alert, suddenly, in anticipation of some grand reveal that Atsumu has not been informed of. It’s unnerving. Being in the spotlight. Having the sun’s glare in your face.

He clears his throat. “I—” He stops. For the first time in a long while, the words fail him. They do not come to him with crystal clarity, like some warship across the water, but smudged, their intentions hidden. Where does he start, how does he explain this? Cowardice. This is cowardice. But cowardice is a hard thing to let go of.

Oikawa Tooru’s face appears in his mind like an evil but well-intentioned grandparent. Start at the end.

Atsumu sucks in a thin breath.

“I ran away.”

Oh, he hates this already.

“I was a kid, so it makes sense that I ran away, but I never went back.” That’s right, he’s a coward. That’s right. ‘I didn’t want to think about the castle, because it hurt, and I was scared of that.” It feels like he’s bending over backwards so god can spit on his chest. It feels like he’s giving away too much. “I avoided anyone who mentioned they were from Canis. Travelers and stragglers. People who had lived in the castle.”

Cowardice is uncomfortable. To the boy who had not thought about life after death, who had tied his existence wholly to the old king’s neck, and then tied a string around that, too, just in case, this is frightening. It is like staring into the mouth of a fire-breathing dragon. It does not matter if the dragon wants to kill you, or if he is simply yawning in your face. Death has eyes. Death is watching you.

Atsumu unbuttons his coat, quickly, while before him Shouyou straightens up against the wall. The drawbridge is down; the path before them is clear. If either of them squints, they will see Sakusa Kiyoomi, standing in a black coat at the edge of the forest, his vipers twined around his neck. His expression is fuzzy as he glares at them in earnest, trying to discern the two figures in the distance. But neither of them sees him. Neither of them looks back.

He shrugs out of his coat, and drapes it around Shouyou’s shoulders. Shouyou leans up to kiss his nose.

“I have to fix things. I’m their prince.” He frowns, upset with. Himself? It is hard to articulate vulnerability, when vulnerability looks so much like death. If this is how Shouyou has felt, all this time, then Atsumu will never know strength like his. Already, he is caving. Already, god is pushing him back. He pinches the bridge of his nose, looking away. Shouyou tilts his head gently to one side, his expression unreadable.

“Okay?” he says.

“Yeah,” Atsumu barks out a dry laugh. “I fucked up. I knew Canis needed someone in the wake of all that shit, but I didn’t want it to be me. I didn’t want to remember the closet and the stupid boy that hid inside, so I turned away.”

There’s so much he has to do. It takes an army to run a kingdom. Not the sort with pikes and shields and armor, though it is always useful if someone knows how to swing a sword. But an army of people. Of Sakusa’s. Tsukishima’s. Oikawa’s.

How far is Canis from here, anyway? He owned a map. It burned down in the fire. He owned a satchel with a few possessions, a compass, a piece of paper with Kita’s name and seal on it. It burned down in the fire. After all this time, after everything he’s been through, Miya Atsumu, once again, has nothing. He is alone. Not abandoned by the universe, because to be abandoned is to imply that they cared enough to make the discerning choice to leave you behind. But simply overlooked.

He glances back at Shouyou. Shouyou is smiling faintly, his eyes bright and tired. Behind him the castle is burning like a planet with a molten core, eating itself alive. Behind the castle, the sun is rising.

“You once said I wouldn’t rat you out to anyone because I don’t have anyone.”

His mother once said love was a kind of violence.

“That actually hurt pretty bad.” Atsumu smiles wryly, his hand on his ear. “I was like, ‘is this guy seriously trying to tell me I’m friendless, when he goes to find Sakusa Kiyoomi’s snakes for entertainment?’” Shouyou laughs, and it’s breathtaking. Atsumu would crack the sky in half over god’s head to hear him laugh forever.

But he can’t. But life is unfair. The gods are stupid.

“But I think you’re right. I think that’s why it pissed me off.” Shouyou snorts, and his hand comes up to cover his mouth. Atsumu feels frustration flare in his chest. Who told this boy to hide everything? Who told him to bottle it all up?

He loosens the clasp on his earring. It falls into his hand.

“But you know what, there’s someone I want to hold onto now. And now I have to go fix everything that I fucked up, because I’m a pathetic excuse for a prince—”

“—I don’t think you’re a pathetic anything—”

“—But I’m the only one Canis has.”

Shouyou is watching him curiously. He bites his lower lip, trying to peer at the object in Atsumu’s hand. It’s not deja vu, it’s not a secret. There’s nothing for him to hide now, and isn’t that a strange feeling, Miya Atsumu. Isn’t that freeing. Isn’t it nice.

Isn’t this boy nice. Wouldn’t you like to take him home.

“So,” he says, his voice suddenly too loud, too awkward. His pulse begins to skitter, wildly, like a wild animal in the dark. This could be the worst decision of his life. This could be a disaster. He could be ruining the one thing he’s ever wanted to save, moving things ahead of himself, he could be tossing a fire at a fire and waiting for something to go off. But what are boys like him made for, if not fireworks?

“I’m sorry this is so abrupt, and I promise I’ll ask you again, properly, when this is all over, but—”

His mother once said love was a kind of miracle.

He puts the dream away. He puts the dream about the boy and the boy and the kingdom crumbled to dust away. “Hinata Shouyou.”

  
⚜

  
“Will you marry me?”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [i lived](https://open.spotify.com/track/3IQF4xCQUPicbA4hWfTxPo?si=l5UAh_VXTzOOu7e6rjZxnA)

This is a story about forgiveness.

You already know this. You have followed the story from its start to its end. You are sitting in your armchairs or your bus seats or lying in bed, with a pillow tucked under your arm, and you are thinking. You are thinking about what you will have for dinner tonight. You are thinking life is mysterious. You are thinking this story is strange, that magic is strange, that all of this is far away from you, in a world where Oikawa Tooru is the answer to everything.

Oikawa Tooru is not the answer to everything. Love is not the answer to everything. Forgiveness is not the answer to everything, even though this is a story about forgiveness, even though you have seen the boy let the ghost go. He has let the ghost go. He is walking away from it, now, across the field of flowers.

Can you see him? His back is turned to you. His heart is sunburned. His mother is dead, and his father is dead, and his castle has burned to the ground. He is walking through the light of morning, walking through a field of flowers, his bare feet making soft sounds in the dirt. And life is terrible. And life is awful. And the boy will always have hands that remind him of June, of December, of screaming in the sand.

His father is dead. He let him die. Sometimes life gives you lemons.

In which case, eat them. Eat them raw. Slice them into pieces and suck the pulp from each slice. Your face will scrunch up from the sourness, your eyes will water. Juice will drip down your chin.

No one said living had to be pretty. No one said life was nice. No one said life wasn’t a petty bitch, who gives lemons instead of life insurance, so what does it matter if you have strayed from the path before? What does it matter if you are not full of love, if you are not full of kindness, if your father will always be a murky memory, like something you want to touch, but are afraid to disturb in the dark? You do not have to forgive the hand that bites back. You do not have to forgive life.

But forgive yourself. Because life is awful, and life is terrible, but you are not the magic, you are the person, and all persons are secretly birds, and all birds are beautiful. Because you are an immortal endangered pigeon, with a history of political transgressions. Because you have emerged on the other side of the tunnel, and now you are faced with an infinity of tunnels, but each tunnel is another path forward. Each road will take you somewhere.

It doesn’t matter who is steering. You are on your way. It doesn’t matter where you are going. You are on your way.

It doesn’t matter who is waiting at the end of the line. You are on your way to them, through the cutting darkness of the stars. You are on your way.

  
⚜

  
Hinata Shouyou knows the name of every kingdom his father destroyed in his long and arduous career as king. He knows how to tell the difference between wild garlic and death camas. He knows what it’s like to grow up lonely, and he knows what it’s like to be lonely, and he knows when to give up on trying to turn someone good, and when to walk away, which is useful, which is necessary when you’re the crown prince of a dying kingdom, but he doesn’t know what to do when the boy from the story gets down on one knee and tells him he loves him. He’s holding up a jade earring like it’s the key to the universe. He’s holding up his heart.

What should he do? What can he do? If he takes it, if he takes the damn thing. What if he breaks it?

When Hinata Shouyou was seven, he saw his mother die and his father’s conscience drop out the window. He has seen the war memorial of his mother’s grave. He has seen the hollow interior of his father’s heart. He had declared to Sakusa Kiyoomi, his evil personal attendant, on the night of the Spring Ball, that he would never fall in love. He had no interest in any of this: the elaborate courtship rituals, the give-and-take, the back-and-forth.

And yet. And yet he can’t find the air in his lungs. And yet this is not safe. Shouyou knows what safety is, he knows where to hide from the things in his closet. He knows he’s got a fucked-up head and a fucked-up heart, and that he’s still just starting to work through it. That there’s a lot to fix. That there’s a lot he has to undo.

“An earring,” he croaks out. “You’re giving me an earring.”

Atsumu drops his head. “Yes,” he says. He sounds like he is dying.

“Why are you giving me an earring?”

“Because I don’t have a ring. What do you think I am, a fucking jeweler? I’m a swordsman and a prince. I swing swords and shit. Please, Shouyou.”

He allows the words to linger on his tongue, like the held-breath of the sky before the fireworks. He is not afraid; he is terrified. These are two different emotions: one is about what might happen to the self. The other is about the universe.

The universe. Miya Atsumu.

Same thing? Same thing.

Breathe, Shouyou. Fucking breathe.

Atsum’s head is still lowered. It looks uncomfortable, with his knee on the wood of the drawbridge and his foot on the ground trembling, his whole body a picture of anticipation, or nervousness, or anxiety. He always hides it so well. Everything that could be used against him. He always tucks it in his breast pocket, where you cannot reach it, where you cannot see anything. And Shouyou has never been allowed to see anything. Shouyou has never held a star between his teeth. But perhaps all collision sites look like this.

“Raise your head, Atsumu.”

“Don’t want to.”

“Please,” Shouyou takes the earring from him, curling his fingers in the center of his palm. Then he grabs Atsumu’s hands and pulls on them, until Shouyou is knocking into the wall, and Atsumu is knocking into him, and it’s all so dramatic. It’s all so fucking surreal. The sun is a cinder block now, rotating and burning in the peach-colored sky. Everything is becoming beautiful. His castle is burning and his father is dead and the world is a study in recovery options, in standing up, in moving on from the carcass on the floor.

“My ears aren’t pierced,” he says. “I can’t. What am I supposed to do with this? What do you want from me?”

Atsumu’s face is red, red, red. He frowns, trying to look away, but his hands are in Shouyou’s hands, and they’re here, under the awning of the great big gate that leads to the great big castle. Everything has come together and fallen apart. Everything has fallen apart and come together.

“I want you,” he says, sulking, embarrassed, and Shouyou laughs, his eyes wet suddenly, his nose wet, the world wet as a dream.

“That’s so fucking cheesy.”

“Are you going to say no?”

Shouyou holds Atsumu like he’s trying to hold a falling castle together; here the four towers, here the inner court, here the courtyard with its sakura trees and the old stable and the hippogriffs, did someone set the hippogriffs free, did the hippogriffs stay behind like the birds, and the butterflies, and the flowers?

“No,” he says with an ocean lodged in his throat.

“No. I’m going to say yes.”

This startles a laugh right out of Atsumu, whose shoulders go slack suddenly. “Thank god. If you said no.” He breathes into Shouyou’s neck. “I had this great plan where I run away forever and never come back—”

“—Don’t you dare,” Shouyou says into his ear. "You’re coming back for me.”

This time, when Atsumu looks up, he sees Sakusa. Shouyou has not seen him yet, too distracted as he is by the way Atsumu has pressed him into the wall and made a sonnet out of his skin. But Atsumu sees Sakusa, even as he kisses Shouyou again, and he kisses him, and he kisses him for every mile he will have to walk away from this castle and its people, its prince the heart of a city. Sakusa is concerned. He has been informed as to Atsumu’s origins. Though he is sympathetic, insofar as one sees the horse escaping the stable, and admits that the hay was subpar, he is also ready to wring his neck.

Perhaps it is time for him to go. He brushes the hair from Shouyou’s forehead, kissing the corner of his eye.

“I’ll come back,” he says. “I promise.”

Shouyou blinks. “Is this a prince thing, or a swordsman thing?”

“It’s a me thing.”

Perhaps in another world, magic isn’t real. Perhaps there is a parallel universe somewhere, where people learned to make machines out of men, and encased the world in gray concrete. Perhaps in this one, you can build your heart around a ball and a net and six bodies on the court, and if you do it well enough, you can build your life around them, so when two boys meet under the glare of the spotlights, they play against each other. Perhaps in this one one boy loses, so he points at the other, and he says one day I’m gonna set for you, and then many years later, he sets for him. Perhaps that is also a kind of miracle.

In this one, magic is real. Magic is cruel and unforgiving and a bitch, magic is the guy in the room that won’t stop talking even when everyone has looked away. In this world, gods are people, and people are selfish. When a boy walks into a castle and decides to raise armageddon, they say go ahead. They let him do whatever he wants for six whole months, and then they try to stab him in the face, and everything’s horrible. Everything’s awful. Everything’s on fire.

But Hinata Shouyou is made of magic. Hinata Shouyou is the hand in the sky and the sound of summer, and the prince of a kingdom which will have to relearn itself, now, through the words of its people. The king is dead. The old archmage is gone. Everything that has fallen apart has come together, different, but the same. There is so much he has to do.

Shouyou holds his face in his hands. “Swear it.”

“I swear.”

“Swear it on your life.”

Already, Sakusa Kiyoomi is on the horizon. He is mad. This is understandable; Sakusa Kiyoomi has been standing here for hours now. He has sent off Natsu and Tsukishima and the rest in Aone and Futakuchi’s magical horse-pulled cart, and since then he has been standing here in the cold, waiting for his stupid prince to come back. The sun has risen. It makes him look like a vampire.

Already, the sky is fading into view. They are no longer trapped in the never-ending nightmare of their youth, though childhood demons have not moved from the closet. In the corner of Shouyou’s vision, his dead father watches him through vacant eyes. Healing is not a conservative little waltz at a party: no two steps forward, no one step back.

Healing is no one-way street. It is a maze in a castle, full of mice and dead magic. It is the song that goes on, even when you ask it to stop, even when you’ve gotten bored of dancing.

They will see it through anyway. Because life is cruel and terrible and evil. Life is made of a hundred thousand rocks, and all the rocks are on fire, and all the rocks want to kill you. And Hinata Shouyou is no longer scared of fire, the way he was scared of himself, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it. Too much wild, uncontrolled heat in that cosmos, too much he cannot predict.

Let him have the boy instead. Let him be selfish. Let him kiss this boy, and kiss him, and kiss him until he cannot tell where his hands end and the line of his jaw begins. Let him remember that there was a day once, in the long and bedraggled history of this kingdom, when a boy walked out of a burning castle. That there was another boy. That the two boys were princes, both of them, that they let each other live.

The seventh rule of being a prince: keep your promises. Keep your promises like secrets, tucked under your tongue, tucked beneath your pillow like a charm when you sleep. Keep the image of Miya Atsumu in your heart. Hold it there like a prayer. You are a prince. You know how to do this. You have come back from the dead for him already, a thousand times over, and you will do it again if you have to. You will always remember June. You will always remember how he looked under the light of the moon and the stars, singing softly into your ear.

The seventh rule of being a prince: kiss that fucking boy. You’ve been wanting to for months now, and maybe years, and maybe lifetimes. Kiss the fuck out of that beautiful fucking boy. Tell him how much his hair drives you mad, and tell him how much you like his teeth, and tell him that you’ll never think of dancing without thinking of him again. He is not crying. You are not crying. You are both lying to each other about how sad you are, about how much you want this, about how much you will miss each other in the imminent future, though you have not left, though you are still here at this moment. You are both lying so that you can keep laughing. You are both laughing so that you will stop crying. It is a cold spring morning. It is spring. You are spring, both of you, you are what wakes up when the long winter is over.

Hold him like he’s the first thing you were taught to be afraid of. Hold him like Atlas, keeping the world steady on his shoulders.

Then, when the time is right, let him go.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [midair](https://open.spotify.com/track/7d410nYuLUuyfzJ9wJF4xd?si=2cvmVrsJT769M_w3rfybOA)

A field of flowers. Behind it is the silhouette of a city, which reaches out of the valley of ashes to greet you. Behind the city is the shock of the sky. Blue as a river, no clouds, no signs of rain. You wade through the flowers, each one turning to smile at you as you pass by. You make your way through the sea of blue. The sun is a pitcher of light, pouring itself into the gaping mouth of the earth. You wipe the sweat from your forehead. The flowers tickle your bare hands.

There is someone, just ahead, their face turned away from you. There is someone in the sea. You call out their name, and the name comes to you, though you don’t remember knowing it before. The ocean parts itself. You are carried forward.

The field of flowers opens its eyes. You open your eyes. The boy before you opens his eyes, turning towards you, saturn trailing in his wake. He tells you how long he has been waiting, how sunburned his nose is. He tells you summer has been coarse and dry. He sits in the sea with you, his head on your shoulder, and he tells you about his dreams. He tells you about magic. He tells you about miracles.

You nod, and listen to the sound of angels.

There. You have made him a place to come back to.

**Author's Note:**

> content warnings: fantasy violence, blood, family conflict, unhealthy parental relations (a/n: daddy issues), body horror, intense dream sequences, temporary dismemberment, oikawa tooru, mentions of animal death, mentions of claustrophobia and alcohol, childhood trauma, minor character death, mentioned character death, happy endings  
> [june's twitter](https://twitter.com/atsuhinas). [elmo's twitter](https://twitter.com/nikiforcvs)
> 
> -the first quote is from the journey by mary oliver  
> -the second quote is from you are jeff by richard siken, as is 'i will come back from the dead for you'  
> -june says "thank u and hope u enjoyed this rollercoaster of a fic we had lots of fun planning it and i hope u continue to support us in the future". she also wants to add something about me? but the wind is too loud. i cannot hear it  
> -inspiration and like will to live from quynh @ naiivu_u on twitter and moumo @ inawizaki on twitter because their royalty au art honestly stuck in my head. it stuck in there. like a third leg. also cirque de soleil came out while i was working on chapter 6 and i almost passed out on the spot. if you're seeing this circue de i can't spell the thing i'm sorry you guys are incredible.  
> -will probably be putting up a behind the scenes [thing] on how we fucking got here in 5 weeks but give us some time we're recuperating
> 
> so one day in may june was like ‘prince of a fallen kingdom atsumu tries to kill hinata but falls in love with him instead’ and then both of us forgot about it for a month and when we came back we were like 'let's fuck this up' and then we Fucked It Up. this may be the first time in my life i dedicated a solid, like, five hours from each day to hammering away at a google document that started out as a little snippet of a Fancy Au and became the length of two great gatsby's. it was an incredibly unhinged, but rewarding, experience.  
> the taylor swift gundam au is something we're very, very proud of. if you follow the both of us on twitter you've probably connected the dots between all the oikawa's, the taylor swift gundam, and the butterfly emojis. we held onto this for over a month, so at this point it's really pretty surreal that we're sharing it with you guys at all. hinata shouyou would call it a miracle. oikawa tooru the evil but well-meaning grandparent would call it magic. but me, well. i'll call it the power of friendship.  
> on behalf of the both of us + god, thank you. it means everything to us that you gave this au a shot, and that you made it to the end. if you have any thoughts, any thoughts at all, please let us know in the comments, or come yell at us on twitter, but if not, you can send us some extra hands in the mail, too.  
> wherever you are, whoever you are, i hope you, too, will forgive yourself for everything you've ever fucked up. because fucking up is what makes us human, and all humans are secretly birds, and all birds are angels. as are you.
> 
> have a good one

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [JUNO [PODFIC]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25394362) by [alstroemeria_thoughts (aurantiaca)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurantiaca/pseuds/alstroemeria_thoughts)




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